New drone, first flight, Em is figuring it out. So I don’t really know how we’re trying not to break it, but hopefully, we’ll be getting some good shots for Team Sztanyo!
So it was 2017. I had three kids, my wife was pregnant with our fourth. I ran a little marketing business that was barely paying the bills for our family and I had no idea what I wanted to do with work with my business and with my life. My name is Eric Sztanyo from Keller Williams Realty and TeamSztanyo.com where we are helping you find your home and strengthen your family.
This is gonna be a video about strengthening your family a little bit more. So a little bit less about real estate, a little bit more about strengthening your family. I’m gonna tell a little bit more of my personal story, which if you guys are OG subscribers, you may have seen this video way back when I started the channel, but I’ll give it a little recap here from the thumbnail and the intro. You guys know that we got a brand new drone, which I am super excited for. I think it’s gonna bring a lot of sick new footage to the channel. Make these videos a little bit more interesting, help you guys get a different angle on view of Cincinnati. So I’m super excited about that, but I wanna tell you the story on how we got there.
How Team Sztanyo Started
So a little personal info about me and my dream for my family. I have five kids, been married 17 years… So yeah, we have five kids. Been married 17 years now going back to 2005 and the ages of my kids are from 12 down to almost three years old. But the dream I have is when I’m a grandpa and I’m sitting in my house and my five kids are around my dining room table with all of their grandkids, that’s what I want. That’s what I’m aiming for. But if you go back to 2017, I had no idea how to get there.
What was going on in my life in the 2013 to 2017 timeframe was I was a young father. I was trying to start businesses. They weren’t working all that well. And I had been doing these bible studies with other men and other fathers who I really looked up to and I was looking focusing, particularly a lot on Genesis and the story of Abraham and what he did for his family. And just moved me so much that I wanted to be a really good father. I wanted to leave a legacy of faith for my kids. And, I just didn’t know how to kind of translate that into work.
A big problem for me was the fatherhood narrative became so strong and I wanted to be such a good dad that I had really de elevated work and I had devalued it and, and kind of looked down on it. I didn’t really wanna do good work. I just wanted to be a really great dad. Well, it took me a little while to figure out, I read a great book by Tim Keller called Every Good Endeavor that all work actually is worship and all work has dignity. And that helped me elevate work back to its proper place. And so then this was around, you know, 2014 – 2015. Yes, I still wanted to be a great dad, but I saw work also this ability to worship and work was the avenue in the way that I could be a good dad. It really brought it back up to a level for me where I was really excited about work. I just had no idea what to do.
So I knew I wanted more money. I knew I wanted more time and more flexibility with my schedule. And a lot of that was because I wanted to be with my kids. I wanted to train them and be with them, not just when they were young and in my household, but the vision to get to that dining room table when I’m a grandpa was I want to be available for my kids when they’re in their twenties, when they’re in their thirties, when they’re in their forties. And I wanna be able to father them all along the way.
So I knew where I wanted to get to. I just did not have a clear path in front of me of how to get there. I don’t know what to do. At the time, I was kind of struggling running this little internet marketing business. I had a few clients in 2013 and 2015 that I worked for for a few years, but they ended up letting me go. And so I was just kind of spinning and scrambling, barely kind of making enough to get by, had no real motivation for the work itself.
It was about two years before I feel like God answered a prayer and kind of backed me into real estate. It was not something I wanted to do because I saw real estate as something where agents were on their phone all the time. They were working nights and weekends. It seemed like the opposite thing of what I wanted to do in terms of having more time and flexibility of being with my family. So there I was, we had very little money. I was working a job I didn’t like. My wife was pregnant with our fourth child and this real estate thing kind of pops on the scene. We’re like, yeah, why don’t we go and just shift careers? Let’s see, I was like 35 years old, 36, I’ve got zero experience in this new career. Let’s just go ahead and do that. Seemed like a very big risk and gamble at the time, but my wife was fully behind it and we got going in real estate.
So what’s happened from then till now, the last five years has just been an incredible journey. It’s been remarkable. I got started in wholesaling, which if you guys can, if you wanna go down the YouTube rabbit trail, you can check out wholesaling. There is no limit to videos on that. But essentially you don’t need a license to wholesale, but you get distressed properties under contract and you can sell those to other investors for a fee. I didn’t really wanna do that. I didn’t really have a good perception of what that industry was all about. But then I quickly realized, look, if you treat people with respect and if you can find win-win situations, this is a great business. Very quickly into wholesaling, I got my real estate license cause I’m just like, I don’t know what I’m doing. And then I realized in getting my real estate license, I’m like, man, this is actually everything I’ve been praying about the last two years in terms of my history, my buildup, my skillset, my strengths and talents would fit really well for a real estate agent.
And so then I got really excited and I kind of started building both of these businesses the last five years, both on the investing side and on the real estate agent side. And it’s been a lot of work. But they’ve both been growing very steadily. Got two businesses and the idea kind of was at the time, well, the market’s going good. Now again, this was 2017 and wasn’t these hot hot markets that we’ve seen in the last few years. But I wanted to get really comfortable in learning how to make money on the investor side in case the market does shift, which it could be what we’re heading into right now. I have flexibility in the way I know how to work with real estate and can do it in multiple ways.
And along the way, I’ve had a lot of flexibility.
The kids have been able to come to work with me for about a year on Fridays. I had my two oldest sons come to work with me where they would rotate in and out. They would help with, you know, writing handwritten notes. Some of you guys may have received some of those handwritten notes from them. Birthday cards, anniversary cards, thank you cards, things like that. If you guys have a Bengals or a Reds magnet on your refrigerators because my kids licked and stuffed those envelopes, they’ve been able to help me with that over the years. Some of you guys have seen my kids and met my kids, doing showings when my wife has 3, 4, 5 kids at home and I can take one or two of them with me on showings. I’m gonna do that. And real estate has allowed me to throw the minivan and do showings with you while you guys are looking for houses
And the most recent space where my kids are gonna be able to help, and I’m really hyped about this this drone that I bought. Super excited about this for building out the channel and for content. I think it’s gonna make a kind of a more dynamic for the channel for you. But even maybe more excited is that my 12 year old is pumped about it. He can’t wait to help out and help fly this drone and get some footage for the channel.
So here I am five years later, the business is doing great. I love my job. We’ve got more money as a family where we can make different decisions. We’ve got more freedom in our time and schedule, even though I wanna put a lot of that time into building help the business more and more. We have the, you know, the flexibility to kind of make those choices and decisions. And now I’ve got more opportunities like flying this drone where my kids can come alongside and work with me, which makes me super excited.
So looking back five years, man, it took a lot to get where we’re at. I’m incredibly thankful for where we are now, where the business is at. I love my job. I love helping people like you guys find your home in the area, give you this content about Cincinnati. Some of you guys may have seen this on the channel, but the logo of Team sztanyo, we modified it recently to be a combination of both the Robline Bridge, which is an iconic bridge in, in downtown Cincinnati. But the foundation of that logo is a dining room table. And so our tagline is find your home and strengthen your family. And I think that there’s no other symbol that is maybe more important than the table where you’re in your home. Strengthen your family, having these discussions, loving your kids, going through good times, going through hard times, going through wins, going through challenges, but you’re sharing meals with one another. And the table to me, I’m like, that’s it. That’s the heart of the home.
And so yeah, now you guys know a little bit more about my goal and maybe why I made that logo cuz my actual dream is heading for that table, cuz I wanna raise my kids. Now they may make decisions, they may move away from the city, they may do work that’s totally different than the real estate business and that’s totally fine. But I have an opportunity now and I’ve built something where they can come into it, we can unfold it and kind of work multi-generationally here, where hopefully that dream of the kids and the grandkids around the dining room table can come true.
Build Your Dreams With Team Sztanyo!
I love the fact that I get to help so many of you find that place where you can build your dreams. And I hope if you haven’t spent time this year thinking about dreams for you and your kids going forward, spend some time doing that. It’s not too late, man. It’s once you put your mind and set your mind to something that you want to go after, how it can happen and materialize. So I’m incredibly thankful for that. I’m incredibly excited about this new year. All the things that are gonna happen business-wise. I hope to help many more of you find your home and strengthen your family. And I can’t wait to bring you more sick drone footage. Hey guys, thanks so much! We’ll see you next time.