The number one single office brokerage in the world.
We ran it for 15 years and we had at the end 900 in six agents.
And we took the risk of closing it down and it was the biggest risk we ever talked about currently right now we have almost 9,000 agents. Chuck and Angela Fazio are entrepreneurs, real estate leaders in business mentors. They help real estate professionals build thriving businesses through visionary leadership, proven systems, and a commitment to faith, growth, and lasting impact.
“Our mindset in a lot of different ways is where is everyone going?”
Let's go in a different direction. Right, if we want to do something different or bigger or more impactful, why in the heck would you go in the same direction as everyone else? What tips do we have for, I guess, the couples out there being couples empire? Did they talk about wives is supposed to be submissive to their husbands?
And a lot of women don't like to hear that, but they leave out the other part where they say with the husbands is supposed to do. And the husbands is supposed to love their wives like Christ loved the church. And if you understand what Christ did for the church, you died for it. So...
The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Awesome, guys. Oh, that is sensational. Open. Check out what was the link you said, Paul.
In response is not on the planet. You can live your dream. Hi, welcome back to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'll be your host today, Jay Slangin. And thanks for joining us.
And we're here with two special guests. One of our new shows, Couples Empire, which we really get into. The whole dynamics of running a business as a couple. But yeah, please introduce yourself and tell me where you're from and what you're all about. Hi, I'm Chuck Fazio, I'm from Chandler, Arizona.
And we're entrepreneurs that run businesses. So, one real estate, one event space. All right. I've been my name's Angela Fazio. Also from Arizona.
That's right, right. And I'm a couple of them.
“Couples Empire, you guys are married and everything?”
Yes. All right. And so, I mean, running a business as a couple, right? I know that Couples, just being a couple in general is hard enough, right? Running a business complicates everything, right?
I know that there's kind of a point where it's a learning curve, right? And then you get to a point of, hey, you do your thing. And I do my thing. And we kind of have our place within the business. You know, tell me how it is running a business as a couple.
And how did you finally get to a good dynamic?
Well, I'll tell you, you know, contrary to what you say. I almost think it's harder for people, not to run their businesses as couples. Hello. That's true, honey. How good we have it.
For us, it kind of fell naturally just because she is my best friend. And so, mate, we do everything under the Lord. And we've been blessed to be able to build our businesses together. Okay. And because we have such a great relationship and a great dynamic, it actually makes it
a little easier to be successful because we don't deal with the other drama, most couples deal with. Wow. That's a beautiful thing. It is.
I think there's a couple of facts to understand.
One, since we've started being serious together back in 2001, we've never spent one day
apart. Okay. And we are very similar personality-wise. And yes, it makes our success easier because we can do it all together. And at the beginning, there was some, you know, we don't have really different lanes because
we're so similar. We have a few different lanes. But at first, we did have to, because we're both headstrong people. We did have to figure out how not to kick each other under the table and talk all over each other.
And you still haven't figured that out, though. Yes, I know. It dropped a lot. That is one of my best talents. I'm really good at interrupting.
But we did have that time we were trying to not, like intentionally talk over each other in a negative way, more dominate the situation because we're both dominant people. But that settled in pretty quickly for us. Okay. I guess one of the main things in business is trust, right?
Yes. And you got to trust your business partner.
“And that's what kind of breaks apart a lot of these businesses.”
So I guess being a couple, trust is something that you guys definitely have. Well, you know, you spot on, trust is probably the foundation to any relationship. Yeah. And once broken, it's probably the hardest thing to get back. You know, one of the things the way we have built trust is by action.
You know, I always say talk is cheap.
And the way you build trust is not by saying to someone you're going to do something or you'll be there or whatever. It's just by constant over the course of time, I am a man in my word and she's a woman of her word. And when you constantly show that, the trust comes naturally because we prove it with
actions. Yeah.
And the other part of that is really of transparent communication, which is not so easy at first
because we live in a world where people aren't transparent with each other and they do keep a lot of secrets from each other. And so we had to, I would say something to him that was really vulnerable and he would be okay with it or he would, you know, process through it. And so over time that trust built also because we refuse to have any secrets from each
other. And we don't have to be afraid of saying what's on our mind, even if it, we don't think it's what the other one wants to hear. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a, well, first of all, I just thought about what my friend used
to say in college.
“Like, yeah, word is bond, yo, so kind of like that, right?”
So shout out to my friend, Mitch, but, yes, be a person and back to the point of action. All the time, all the time, he's like, my words, my bottom, my bottom, my word, you know. So, but yes, being transparent, you know, this is, this is also good for a couple of
therapy. Anyone that wants to listen to this and get some tips, transparency's key, trust is key. You can't break that, but that also relates in, in business as well. So, you know, tell us about your business. So, we, we've run a, we've run a few businesses right now.
One of the main ones is, we're big influencers and leaders at EXP, Realty. Okay. EXP, Realty is a cloud-based brokerage, one of the biggest brokerages in the world. We've done with them, she sends to, what is it, 20, 20? 2020.
2020. Mm-hmm. It's a little longer. Before that, we owned our own brokerage, we owned the number one single office brokerage in the world.
Okay. Yeah. It was a big brokerage and we took the risk of closing it down to go build with this new model at the time. And it was the biggest risk we ever took, but we saw the vision.
And we believed in it and we know what we're capable of doing. So, currently right now, we have almost 9,000 agents work in our group all over the world.
“And you grew that from, how big was your personal brokerage?”
And then you grew that to 9,000, like how big was that you did? Good. That's a good question. So, our brokerage, we, we ran it for 15 years and it, we hadn't, at the end, 900 and six agents out of one location in Arizona.
So, we were very active. The massive.
Yeah, we used to do about 2 billion in production a year, which is equivalent to probably
3 to have billion in today's numbers. Wow. And so, no regrets on that, right? From adding a 0, 900 and 9,000. Yeah, good point.
No, no. 10x. Great card. 10x there, right? And we have great, yes.
The biggest risk we ever took in our lives. It was. Yeah. And what's interesting is neither of us have business backgrounds. Yeah.
And we didn't start, we didn't start in real estate with this, you know, MBA or any kind of schooling or knowledge or prior experience with business.
“And I think that over time, got it really allowed us to learn business through a lot”
of mistakes and a lot of failures. And we've been able to apply that over and over and over in bigger ways as we've grown into different businesses as well. All right. Wow.
So, yeah, it's kind of like your your mistakes and it's almost like your assets and your equity and your armor, they say, right? So, yeah, what kind of mistakes and growing that fast and that big. What did you guys learn along the way? Well, I think a lot of this stuff is there's in the industry.
You don't have really people that are going to pour into you that have success at building a brokerage because technically you're that competition. Yeah. Very flat. Yes.
So, it's a very competitive industry. So, we had to learn on our own, what work, what didn't work. You know, there.
You can't just always follow the grain because that's not always the right thing to do.
So, a lot of the things I've been blessed. I've been God gives me visions on what to do and he's given me that skill set. So, we'll try certain things if it works. We elaborate on it. If it does it work, we pivot really quick.
One of those. It was almost like a blue ocean strategy where you go and where. Others aren't. Absolutely. That actually has been our mindset and a lot of different ways is where is everyone going.
Let's go in a different direction. Yeah. Right.
If we want to do something different or bigger or more impactful.
Why in the heck would you go in the same direction as everyone else? Absolutely. Yeah.
Maybe at first to learn to learn the ropes.
But you got to say okay, you know, I'm not just a lemon. Jumping off the entrepreneurial cliff of real estate and brokerages. I'm trying to do my own thing. Right. And that's where you kind of set yourself apart.
But you did ask what kind of failures we have. There's not a lot of categories where we didn't fail. You know, lots of bad financial decisions. Definitely lots of people bad people decision. Yeah.
Spad relationships. Yeah, a lot, a lot of things. And it could, it could crush most people. But that's the difference between people who are willing to push through those huge hardships. Learn from them.
Hopefully learn from them. We've made some mistakes more than once. Yeah. And then keep pushing. But that's also where the strength comes in of our relationship.
Because we have each other. We can both then two each other. There'll be days. She's having worse than I am or vice versa. We talk ourselves out of why would you quit?
Why would you give up? So that is the beauty of dealing with the strong relationship as opposed to not be in the business with the partner. Yeah, we don't go home. And someone says, I don't want to hear about business. You know, yeah, I guess that's a question.
“It is always like, how do you separate your business life?”
And then your home life, right? No. We don't. It's life. Yeah.
We always say life is life.
Yeah. This is our life. You when you're passionate about something and you love something. Why would you kind of separate it? It's like, okay, let's talk about this because we love it.
We don't. A hundred percent. We're always brainstorming, right? We'll take a walk and we're brainstorming where, you know, it doesn't matter what we're doing.
We go on dates every single day. Yeah. And we brainstorm and just talk about what can we do. Okay. Okay.
Dates every day. Oh, yeah. What would you have a hot wife like that? You want to date the way we do it. All right. This is a very interesting for my first couple's empire here.
All right. But so you guys have, I mean, 9,000 people, right? From 900, 10x to definitely sounds like an empire, right? What makes you, what is that blue ocean strategy that sets you apart? And why are all these these agents signing up with with your brokerage?
Well, it's, it's just understand the, the brokerage of EXP is the, the bigger brokerage, which has over probably 85,000 agents. So we, we have one of the bigger organizations within the brokerage. One of the draws to it is the model is different. It's, it's a cloud base.
It's one brokerage worldwide. And the collaboration, because one of the big things I, we say is, Iron shop and Zion one man shop and another is when you have big players and big producers pouring into each other. The success is endless.
Yeah. So what do you say? Iron sharpens. So it's a scripture verse. Proverbs 27, 17. Okay.
As all you're in shop and Zion one man shop and another. Okay.
“And the, it's a great analogy of that's how two pieces of iron get sharp.”
Yeah. There is definitely some conflict, which, you know, when you got two strong people, you don't just sit and agree with each other. You, you have debates. You have conversations.
You point out each other's flaws in courage and hold accountable. Yeah. And a lot of people don't like that. That's why a lot of people fail is they're not willing to grow and learn or take criticism. Yeah.
Okay. And I will tell you, we certainly did not get all 9,000 agents. We have extraordinary partners. Yeah. You know, we have, and we don't, we didn't even bring all the extraordinary partners.
People, good great people bring great people. Yeah. And people who want to succeed and want to be in bigger rooms and think bigger are attracted to surrounding themselves with those kinds of thinkers.
And so we've been so blessed and fortunate that we have an, an amazing organization full of amazing people.
Yeah. Okay. And so what, what have you learned with this new organization? Like, how was it different from the personal organization that you had? Like, what's the big difference?
“And well, the big, why did you say that it was a hardest decision of your life?”
Because it was, I mean, it was such a great organization. So, so the reason why it was a hard decision is we, we built this business up to be a multi-million dollar business. Yeah. And we were financially making good money. In order to do the, the new venture, we have to close our company down.
Okay. And they weren't paying us one penny for it. Yeah. So, most people said, there was the dumbest thing we ever did. I mean, you got a multi-million dollar business that we could have sold.
Yeah. And we literally closed it for a chance and opportunity. Yeah. And why won't you sell it first? Why didn't we?
Yeah. Could you could you out? You know what? That's a great question.
Well, well, we did get offers.
Yeah. We did have some offers. The way the other brokerage works is because you build agents underneath you. So, we were hoping to start a foundational. Yeah.
Get our agents. Because we did want to help our agents. Yeah. So, so it was like we were learning our business under the new umbrella. Okay.
When you say, why in afforded us to work now, not just in the local Arizona area. But now it enabled us not only to build all over the country, but all over the world. Yeah. So, the platform would afford us to do it to build even bigger. So, that's the chance.
Well, yeah. I'm just sure they were happy to have you guys come over here. They sure were. You know, you asked a great question on what have we learned. And I've got to tell you far more than I anticipated.
Yeah. And one of the things, why, why is it so different? Our experience now on what we're building now, the what we were doing before.
“And the truth is is real estate is a very antiquated.”
It's the whole environment is antiquated. And it's really everyone's out for themselves. You know, you're working even within the same brokerage agents are working against each other. They look at each other's competitions. They don't share and collaborate because they're afraid.
Somebody's going to steal their stuff.
Now, that's an always true, but by large it is.
That's, that's iron fighting iron. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's too simple.
It's too simple. It's too simple. Oh, that's like the two opposing ends of magnets pushing each other away. And what's interesting is because of the WITXP is built the business model. It encourages people like us who want to share to share more intentionally.
And people who maybe wouldn't been as inclined to share to collaborate deeply. And that has been a whole new. Okay. Far exceeded my expectations. Yeah.
All right.
“Well, what tips do we have for I guess the couples out there being couples empire?”
What do you guys have to say? I got the first one. Seek other couples who are not tearing each other down, who are not opposing each other, who don't complain about each other. There are couples out there that have abiding relationships.
Seek them out and and learn all you can from what they're doing and teach them all you can about what you're doing. Because if you surround yourself with garbage, why is complaining about their husbands, has been complaining about their wives, that will wear on your mindset. Yeah. Yeah.
The other thing I mean, which is big to me is I'll walk with Christ. And we take the Bible literally from a standpoint and it helps in every aspect of your life, especially marriage. And I tell people, look, even if you're not a spiritual person or you don't believe in Jesus, I will tell you, just reading the Bible and the element it has on how to live life and how of a relationship really do work.
I mean, it really is powerful stuff.
And the one thing is that the Bible says that a lot of people like to point out, they talk about wives supposed to be submissive to their husbands. And a lot of women don't like to hear that, but they leave out the other part where they say, "With the husbands is supposed to do." And the husbands is supposed to love their wives like Christ loved the church.
And if you understand what Christ did for the church, he died for it. So to make a great relationship is I cherish this woman. And I protect the lover at all costs. And in return, she loves and respects me because when you create that, what we call the love respect cycle, it does create a perfect marriage.
Now it does take a lot of work and it takes communication. And intention. But I will tell you, you gotta get ready to pride in ego. If you want a great marriage, it's between just the two of you. And like Angela said, look, if your husband out there, don't go hang out with a bunch of dudes
and bitch about your wives or go look to try to pick up girls, I go because you just set yourself up for failure in your relationship. Yeah.
“I guess it's also a constant work because you have to always have the respect of your partner.”
That's a huge thing. So we got trust. We got transparency. We got respect. I have a really huge one.
You have to date. You have to spend a quality time with each other. Listen, we have six children and believe me.
We always made it a priority that we are each others first.
Because I can't tell you how many countless couples, you know, they get married and the life takes over and even if you don't work with each other. That's okay. But you have to date because you'll wake up 20 years later when the kids are out of the house. And you're like, who am I living with?
Well, no, no, here's what here's what you're a lot. And it's mostly the women. This is not a bash on the women.
It's just women are way more loving on their children.
Maybe that's your own way. Don't worry. That's the word I'm looking for.
“And when you talk to someone and they'll say my kids are the most important thing in my life.”
Well, that's your already started off in the world.
Your husband and the wife are the number one most important things in your life.
Not the kids. Horace goes, got first. Second. And then everything else goes below it. And sometimes kids are third.
Sometimes they're fifth. You know, sometimes business is third. And so if you don't spend, you change. I was 30 when I met him. You know, he was a lot older than that.
And so these 25 years, everyone changes in 25 years. And if you're not aware of what's going on in each other's lives and the things that are shaving you as a person. You will naturally grow apart.
“You have to intentionally stay focused on each other and engage with each other.”
We dream together. We dream, we talk, we plan. It's. That is also so important. Dreaming.
Dreaming together. You know, having those goals together, right? Because it's also like, you know, you can't just go through life, right, without the dream.
You know, and when you both have that same dream, that is like very powerful.
You know, it's probably said, I would go on the lemon tip. Most couples don't ask their spouse. What are you dream about? And do we dream together? You know, or is that your dream in here's my dream?
Yeah. That's, it's sad.
“Yeah, you know, in Isaiah, it's, which is a book in the Bible.”
It says, where there is no vision the people will perish. If you don't have anything that you're developing, and it doesn't have to be business all the time. It can be interests or aspirations or hard money. You know, it can be anything. If you aren't developing those thoughts together, and you're not open to that,
and you want to separate those things, you're separating yourself from your spouse. And that will inevitably cause it to disappoint. Yes, it will. Well, I will tell you, I read through your guys kind of story story points. And for anyone listening, you're definitely going to want to tune into their episode,
because, you know, they're, they're history together, and what they kind of grew out of. And the issues that they both grew out of to kind of overcome to get to where they are is just so, so interesting. And I'm going to leave it at that, right. But what you heard here is just a tip of the iceberg.
And yeah, wow, it's incredible that you're sitting here.
It's incredible what you've built. And thank you for joining us. Thank you for having us. Appreciate it. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing that you guys have.
You're my first couple's empire, right? And thanks for being, that's like a beautiful thing to hear what you guys have. We give God all the glory. Absolutely glory, yes. All right.
Well, thanks for tuning in, and I hope you guys join us again. And that's it from. Anyway, where could people find you? Oh, well, one stop collaboration is our group that we're building in the real estate. So the website is history.
The one stop collaboration.com. You can find us the iconic power couple and Chuck and Angela, if as you want. Facebook and Instagram. Good job, yes, Chuck and Angela got you. All right.
Well, that's it from our studios in sunny Miami Beach. Thanks for joining us and see you next time. Thank you. Thank you.
