The House Nextdoor - Where Real Estate and Real Life Meet
Welcome to The Home Nextdoor, a podcast where real estate and real life come together. We’re two Central Texas Realtors working side by side at Realty Austin | Compass and we’re here to share stories, insights, and conversations that go beyond the closing table. From navigating the fast-changing Texas housing market to balancing family, friendships, and the everyday ups and downs of life, we bring you real talk with a neighborly touch. Whether you’re a homeowner, future buyer, fellow Realtor, or just curious about what life is like in Central Texas, pull up a chair—we saved you a seat nextdoor!
The House Nextdoor - Where Real Estate and Real Life Meet
Stronger Than Yesterday
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What if your biggest struggle could become your sharpest edge? We open the door to a raw, practical conversation about confidence, luxury strategy, and mental health—and how those threads weave into better client outcomes. From a $12M Starbucks story to the quiet work of broker support and contract review, we unpack what it really takes to serve people well when their largest asset is on the line.
We get honest about anxiety—how hiding it nearly collapsed daily life, and how therapy, medication, and boundaries rebuilt a steadier foundation. That transformation didn’t just change home; it changed work. Fear shifted from a secret to a signal. The result is a more grounded, present approach with clients, especially when emotions run high around death, divorce, job changes, or the joy of growing families. We talk practical mental health tools that keep you calm at the closing table and clear during negotiations.
We also map a surprising career bridge: HR to real estate. Layoffs and listings share more DNA than you’d expect—expectation setting, documentation, empathy, and decisive follow-through. Add in luxury playbooks like proximity marketing, community presence, and competence-first service, and you get a sustainable model for growth at any price point. The key is pairing bold outreach with meticulous execution: inspections managed, timelines protected, and communication that keeps every stakeholder aligned.
If you’re building a real estate career, considering a pivot, or simply navigating high-stakes decisions, this story-driven conversation offers actionable insights on resilience, confidence, and client care. Tap play, then tell us: what did your hardest season teach you? Subscribe, share with a friend who needs the push, and leave a review to help others find the show.
https://housenextdoortx.com
Cold Front And Cozy Banter
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the house next door. With Barbara Gillio. And Anthony Harris. Where real estate meets reality.
SPEAKER_02Well, welcome back, guys.
SPEAKER_00Yes. To the house next door. To the house next door where reality meets. Where do you have the intro? I know, but I'm going to say it. Where real estate meets reality because it's not.
SPEAKER_03But you're not.
SPEAKER_00And I'm loving how, okay, for people who don't live in Texas, or for people who do live in Texas, it is so exciting when we finally start to have temperatures break from our awful hot summer.
SPEAKER_02And it wasn't too bad this year, but the humidity. The humidity.
SPEAKER_00And I moved recently to Smithville, which I've mentioned a gazillion times. And the humidity in Bash drop Smithville is very different than the hill country.
SPEAKER_02I wonder why.
SPEAKER_00I don't know what I think it's the Gulf. Okay. The Gulf of America or the Gulf of Mexico. Just the Gulf. Okay. Just the Gulf. Where the big the big body of water is. That big body of water lingering out there.
SPEAKER_02That hurricanes come in. It is hurricane season right now.
SPEAKER_00It is. I know. Yeah. But it this morning I walked outside. It was in the 60s. Yes.
SPEAKER_02And last night it felt nice.
SPEAKER_00Yes. I can sit on the patio again and look at the turkey.
SPEAKER_01You just moved here.
Framing The Theme: Growth And Resilience
Confidence Lessons From Luxury Icons
SPEAKER_00I know, but I could sit in the patio in May and then I couldn't sit on the patio again until now. Today we're going to talk about things that we like obstacles that we have overcome per in our personal life, professional life, to just be more evolved people, you know, stronger, stronger people, which translates to, you know, serving our clients better, just serving our lives better. Because as humans, we should always be striving to constantly evolve and learn and grow. And being able to say, Oh man, I could have done this better. What are my takeaways? What three things can I learn from this situation that I could do differently to make me um, you know, just a little bit wiser? I always feel like there's no failures in life. As long as you're able to look back on it and see how you could have done things differently and you learn something from it. As long as you learn something from your failures, they're not failures. Those are wins. Yeah. Because that's how we that's how we become interesting people. We have diverse situations and we have adversity. And it's how we learn from that adversity and grow from it that makes it part of our character and who we are.
SPEAKER_02I went to Tom Ferry. Yeah, and so when you were talking about that, something I was thinking of is confidence.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, and Josh Altman was speaking there.
SPEAKER_00Oh, we love so we we're huge Bravo fans. So shout out to all first of all, all the housewives adore you. Sorry, squirrel segue. And million-dollar listing, um Josh Flag. Josh Flag. He's our favorite. Josh Flag by far is our favorite. But we like Josh Altman. Why is Glinda Baker not on there? She needs to be they need to have one on um Million Dollar Listing Atlanta. Yeah, yeah. I feel like that would be good. Yeah, they've got a lot of fun. I feel like Austin should have one. Austin should be. Tracy could be here too, because she's already in the scene. Like we're talking about these people, like we know that right. We because we know. Anyway, sorry, go on.
SPEAKER_02Talk about just um so one of the things they talked about was confidence. Yeah. And that's something I struggle with. You know, I know real estate, I know, but there's still that confidence piece. You know, at the end of a day, a two million dollar home is just like a two hundred thousand dollar home. Right. The only difference is it's bigger.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. More zeros and commas. But you're treating the transaction the same.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's no difference in in the way that it transacts. Um and something that Josh Altman talked about in his keynote was he knew that from the very get-go that he wanted to focus on high-end luxury. He was going to go to Beverly Hills and sit in the Starbucks there and have all his MLS sheets spread out with his business where people could tell that he was a realtor. Right. And he walked in, well, uh, MBA star walked in with their agent. This was a Starbucks that a lot of the agents took their clients to to go get coffee. And he said that he poured out his coffee, threw it away, and went in line right behind him. Oh wow. And started talking about real estate and then sold his property.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_02Um, and that was his first deal.
SPEAKER_00That's confidence. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And it was a twelve million dollar home, something like that. It was a substantial amount. But the confidence that took, yeah, like I couldn't imagine. I can talk to someone, no problem. I can talk about real estate. Right. I can talk about homes. Glenda Baker also talks about that too. That she said the number one place is a bar. She's like, even if you don't drink, go sit down at a bar, get a glass of water. When someone sits down, you talk about how you just showed one, two, three Banana Street and that's it's great and all this, and then it'll translate into business.
SPEAKER_00Right. It it sometimes it is and they always do talk about like I've taken some of these, you know, just seminars or just listening to other luxury agents talk about how they procure their clientele, and it's mostly, you know, living that lifestyle that their clients live as well. So they're at country clubs, they're playing tennis, they're playing pickleball at the high-end country clubs, they're they're rubbing shoulders with like-minded people in that luxury.
SPEAKER_02And that's exactly what Josh said. He said that you need to hang out with the clients that you want.
SPEAKER_00Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_02And so you go to the Beverly Hills Starbucks web shop.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02So next week, see me in Westlake.
SPEAKER_00You go ahead. I love where I am right here.
SPEAKER_02But that confidence is good. But then confidence isn't there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Well, I um I I agree with you though. Confidence is a huge thing that you have to overcome, or not overcome, but just get comfortable with.
SPEAKER_02Being comfortable with the uncomfortable.
Breaking Into Luxury Through Proximity
SPEAKER_00Being comfortable, uncomfortable, especially in real estate, because I get a lot of people who ask me about breaking into real estate and I thought you were going to say breaking into other people's houses. Oh, well, there's that. I'll just use my lockbox. Throw it through the window. And I'm in at your own race.
SPEAKER_02And part of it is is confidence, is having confidence and well, and you're you're dealing with clients that are buying their biggest investment or their biggest life purchase. And if you're not confident, they don't want to work with you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a huge responsibility that's being put on your shoulders of helping these helping people with the largest transaction typically of their lives, right? Because their homes are their biggest asset. And so you have to have the confidence to do that, but you also have to have the knowledge. And I know people say fake it till you make it, but I don't really believe in playing with people's money that way. There's a lot that I did as a new agent to prepare myself to be able to be competent in that position. And I think that's really an important um aspect of evolving yourself as a realtor and not just go fake it till I make it. You have somebody looking over your contracts, you have somebody helping advise you through those inspections. I still, I still do. I call broker support. You're a topic at broker support. They talk about you.
SPEAKER_02They probably talk about you too.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna say, I mean, I throw in shade at Anthony, but you know they talk about me too.
SPEAKER_02We have obligation to our clients and making there's still stuff we don't know. I've been licensed 10 years, you've been licensed since 2014, so that's 11 years. 11 years, yeah. Yeah. And there's still things that come up and like last week.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. I think one of the biggest things that I personally struggled with is um well, I guess it's confidence too. But I had, and I don't know if other people out there have have this. I mean, a lot of people do. I have suffered from anxiety disorder most of my life. I mean, pretty much all my life. I was born with it. And um, there were times in my life where I hid it because I was so ashamed of my anxiety disorder, and I saw it as a weakness. And so I didn't tell my mom, I didn't tell my sister. At the time I was married to my first husband, who was my I met in high school, and I just hid it from everybody, but it's it was like the worst kept secret because everybody knew I was falling apart, but nobody would say anything. But I got to a point where I couldn't drive a car. Wow, I couldn't be alone in a public place because I was so afraid of having an anxiety attack. Wow. And somehow I built my world where I never was driving alone or going anywhere alone.
SPEAKER_02And now look at you.
Confidence Versus Competence In Real Estate
SPEAKER_00I know, and now and now look at me. I was working for Jimmy Jacobs Custom Homes when it finally like just came to a head. And I was doing marketing. This is back when I was marketing, and I had just finished this beautiful, gorgeous broch brochure for them, and I was so proud of it, but I had worked so hard on it, and at the time my marriage was also falling apart. And so sorry, getting a little vulnerable here. And I started to have an anxiety attack that I just it was a constant anxiety, like I could not turn off the anxiety attack, and it was just it would not stop. And my son was he's just a little baby, he's only two well, I don't know how old he was. I have to think about what I think he was around three, four at the time. And I remember I couldn't even be a mom to him because I was so caught up in all of my stuff. I was just trying to survive. I lost so much weight, I looked amazing.
SPEAKER_02That is the only stress equals me.
SPEAKER_00I was like, man, I want to be anxiety-ridden skinny again right now, so bad. Without the anxiety, without the anxiety, so maybe just so zembeg skinny that work.
SPEAKER_01And come on, I would love that opportunity. Um I've heard the side effects since our yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So it took, I had to finally admit to my employer, to my husband, to my family that this was out of my control and that I've been hiding it since I was about 14. And so I got I went to an antidepressant and it took about four antidepressants before we finally got the right one. And that's a process. Have you ever tried to get on an antidepressant and it wasn't the right one? No. Man. You probably should be. You can get I was one made me throw up, one made me feel like I was I never taken, you know, illicit drugs ever. I can't even smoke pot because I I have to be in control of things. That makes me feel weird. But it I felt like I was on meth or something because my like how people went to sleep. How does that feel? I couldn't sleep. My heart was like, I'm like, for somebody with anxiety, this is the worst. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so when we finally found-and they tell you to keep it for four weeks or six years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they can't my doctors just said, 'Keep trying it.' I'm like, I will lose my mind if I can. And I'm sorry, I'm losing my mind. And now I'm really losing my mind. And so I got into therapy, we found the right medicine, and um it the next six months, my my whole life changed. Wow. It was the first time I navigated the world without fear. And the and I didn't realize how much fear was a part of my personality. So it was really crazy to so many people felt like it changed my personality, but it was really like this grip. If you could imagine like hands gripping around your heart with fear, it was like that grip just loosened up. And you felt and then I felt free and light, and like I had a little light inside, and I could finally let it shine.
SPEAKER_01But my nobody wants to listen to us.
Mentorship, Broker Support, And Ethics
SPEAKER_00But my my whole world changed. I ended up leaving my husband, and it was it was the right thing to do because that relationship was started in that place where I wasn't healthy. And what that's what made that relationship work is me being broken. And when I got strong and became myself, my spouse did not like that. He liked broken barb. That was the barb he wanted. That's the barb he fell in love with. And it was it was really hard for me to you know navigate all that. And then that's when I started to go into real estate.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow. And now you're real estate's anxiety.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, now real estate is but it it it was something, it was a huge thing that I had to face.
SPEAKER_02I went to Yeah, you changed your personal life, you changed your professional life.
SPEAKER_00I changed my professional life, my personal life. And the thing about anxiety is it never goes away.
SPEAKER_02You just have to manage it.
SPEAKER_00You just manage it and you learn to manage it where it's it's like this comfortable old friend, and you don't get afraid of it and you don't run away from it, you don't let it have control. You go, Okay, here you are. It's like that Billy holiday sound. Um, good morning, heartache, please sit down. It's like when my anxiety comes back, I'm like, ah, good morning. Let's talk about why you're here.
SPEAKER_01Let's get to the root.
SPEAKER_00Let's have a cup of coffee together.
SPEAKER_01And so a vodka.
SPEAKER_00And so overcoming that really, man, in learning to do understand that this anxiety isn't a a weakness, it isn't a negative, it does make me who I am. And I eventually got off of antidepressants because they started to kind of uh take away the edge of me. And they did kind of start to change my personality. It got to a point where I needed them to save my life, but then you were able to manage it. They were starting to destroy my life because it was taking away impulse control and kind of it I didn't care about anything. I didn't even know what it felt like to feel for a certain period of time. So I had to like pull back on that. So it was like what saved me, I had to confront that. Yeah, I had to confront that too. And so it was a very pivotal few years in my life, and I feel like I just constantly keep having times where it comes up again, and I just, you know, I tackle it, I talk to it, I I don't get afraid of it, and it just makes me who I am, gives me my edge, gives me my little personality, and it's part of the little adversity that makes me stronger, and so I've become accustomed to my but in a very functional way.
Barbara’s Anxiety Story And Turning Point
SPEAKER_02And I don't know if you if you do this, but whenever I change my life in dramatic ways, I do it all at one time. Yes, like I don't do like I'm gonna buy a house here. No, I do I'm gonna buy a house, I'm gonna change job, I'm gonna like all at one time, and we're gonna see how it goes.
SPEAKER_00Right. I I feel like I do the same thing too when when I make moves, it's big moves. It's it is when I do life changes, they're they're big life changes, and they're not it they seem spontaneous, but they're not, right? We've been thinking about them for a while.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00And then we just pull the trigger and that's that's a domino effect of everything.
SPEAKER_02And my friends think it's spontaneous, but in reality, I've been not just houses or anything like you know, cars, whatever. Your job, you changed out of a career.
SPEAKER_00HR, you had a successful career in HR. Yeah. I don't know. And just successful. And then you just switch to real estate. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people who are like, What is he doing?
SPEAKER_02And you know, the crazy thing is HR and real estate have a lot in common. Yeah, um, people don't realize that, but it's all managing people. You're managing people business operations and in HR, well, and I guess in real estate, you're operating business operations as well. You're you're it's a lot of project management, keeping on track.
SPEAKER_00It is, and being diplomatic and understanding each side, you have to understand the seller's side, the buyer side to be able to negotiate company side. And the what? The title company side. And the title company side, yeah. You have to manage all these different sides to be able to get to the end.
SPEAKER_02And people's emotions. Um in HR, especially HR, well, both, you know, if someone's about to lose their job or getting up, written up, or a promotion.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Their mood depends on what's happening there. And then in real estate, they're buying, selling their emotions, death, divorce, kids, empty nest, like those all have emotions tied to them.
SPEAKER_00It's always a pleasure or a pain, pain point where people move, right? They're having babies, they're getting married. That's the pleasure point. And downsizing, sometimes that's a pleasure point too, because they're empty nesters and they have this new and then you have the pain points, divorce, death, losing a job, you know. And you have to be able to help navigate those emotions. It's a very emotional thing. So HR would be perfect for real estate.
SPEAKER_02Also, if you were a therapist, I think we're just unofficially therapist.
SPEAKER_00I feel like I feel like that would translate really well into real estate. Project managers, I think they could transition really well.
SPEAKER_02Usually they don't have people skills. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00I feel like we're making blanket statements about project managers.
SPEAKER_02We should probably stay away from that. We're gonna make all the project. Is it just two people still listening, your mom and my mom?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So but it's you know, those things in HR specifically, I went through a lot of a lot of stuff that really made me a tougher person.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, you know, when I first and going back to confidence is whenever I first got into it, I didn't have the confidence to sit there and fire someone.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um but something psychologically that I had to take myself through is, you know, by the time they're at my desk or in the conference room when I'm firing them, they've had plenty of warnings, they've had the support they need, and it's their decision that they have not changed. It's not in my hands to make them change. Right. I've given them the resources to change and showed them the expectations. Um, and you know, same with real estate. You set those expectations early on in the transaction. This is how I operate, this is what I expect, those consultations, yeah. Um, to make it hopefully a smooth transaction, even though we know that anything can happen.
SPEAKER_00It's the real estate gauntlet. You will always have bumps and bruises and things. But you know, sometimes you do have those transactions where everything just goes according to plan. And it's those are fabulous. Yes. We love those.
SPEAKER_02They're too far and few between. Um, and you know, I really love whenever we have the perfect buyer and perfect seller. It just makes a world of a difference. Even if the lender's terrible or the title company or the survey doesn't get done, whatever those little things, if we have a good buyer and a good seller, we we can make it work. And I always say everything's figure-audible.
SPEAKER_00Everything is figural-audible, role. Yeah, it's hard to say. It definitely is.
Medication, Therapy, And Managing The Fear
SPEAKER_02And you know, I think having a good realtor is being able to problem solve and do, and I had a lot of that in HR as well. Um, problem solving and creating managing people's emotions to get to the outcome.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, as realtors, we are problem solvers, critical thinkers, negotiators. There's a lot of hats, marketers. There's a lot of hats that we wear. Therapist. Therapists in some cases. And so, yeah, there's a lot of hats we wear. So it it you have to have a lot of confidence and be able to switch it around to be able to fulfill that particular role. That, you know, one minute you're a marketer, one minute you're negotiating, the next minute you're you're sympathetic and listening to this particular seller's story of why they have to sell their home and and then gearing up to help them in that direction. So it takes a lot out of us emotionally. So we have to make sure our mental health is really there and strong for our clients because there's a lot that we go through that we don't talk about. We don't really talk about this part of real everybody just thinks it's, well, let's look at great homes and this, that, the other. There are times, and I'm sure this is for you too, where I showed up to show a house and my personal life is falling apart, falling apart. And I was just sobbing for something. And I, as soon as I open that door, my realtor face is on because it's about them, not me. And it is hard to suck that up. But we do it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And you know, I always apologize for for, you know, not being present, essentially, but really it's nobody it's all internal.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Nobody knows that you're not present.
SPEAKER_02And with the showing that I just had where they were complimenting you at, that was I apologize because I've been really focused on that other.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's taking up real estate in your brain. Yeah. No pun in you.
SPEAKER_02Um and there was something else I was gonna hit on.
SPEAKER_00Uh well, it there's so much to cover in this. There's just our the things that we have overcome personally. For me, anxiety was a major one. For you, confidence.
SPEAKER_02And I'm still working on that.
SPEAKER_00Well, me too, but I think it comes with age. You know, I'm 50 and you're in your late 20s. So when I was in my late 20s, I was a hot mess express when it came to confidence. I think it's just a hot mess express. You've got your stuff together. But so it feels like seems like I feel one good thing about getting older is you do feel more confident. As long as you're just experiences. Yeah, you if you're taking your experiences and instead of having regrets, you're going back and going, Oh, okay, I learned this, I learned that. This is all shaped who I am.
SPEAKER_02You know, that's something I'm very fortunate with. I don't regret a lot. Yeah, that's great. Um, there's very, very few that I regret. And so that's a good way.
SPEAKER_00That shows that you're learning from what you you do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because if you're not learning and your ego, again, I know we talk about ego all the time, gets in the way, then you have regrets because you you're not kind of accepting the life path that you're on and kind of learning from that. And it's important to do that, I think. Very much so.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So it came to me again that I I forgot it.
SPEAKER_00And he's having brain fogs. I love it. I love that it's interesting. I couldn't remember the door code to get into my own house last night. And I swear like my bro, I was like, I have early onset Alzheimer's. No, I'm just in the throes of menopause.
Reinventing Life And Career With Boundaries
SPEAKER_02Well, and it's funny, I just look down and our sales manager's calling me, and I'm like, oh, anxiety.
SPEAKER_00What keeps you up at night?
SPEAKER_02But the other thing I was gonna say is, you know, we're fortunate that we work at a larger brokerage where we have a lot of agents that are top-producing agents that are experienced. And when I go into the office, it makes me feel good that I'm not the only one that's in this struggling, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And yeah, everything's like.
SPEAKER_02Managing a problem house that's just hard to sell.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02But we have the support of other agents and of our staff, collaboration.
SPEAKER_00I'll say it again. Yeah, collaboration is so key to being successful in this industry because we are lone wolves and we're out there by ourselves on islands. And when we can finally come together in a very supportive environment in our brokerage, we're a very Realty Austin Compass, I'll call them out all day long. We have such a nice, collaborative, supportive environment there. So it it does, it helps us have that landing space for all the emotions that we go through and the things that we learn every day. I mean, you you're a seasoned realtor, you will come up with new things that come in real estate that you're like, hey, did you ever see this? Have you ever seen a house built on top of a septic tank? Because I have, and it's happening right now.
SPEAKER_02And I feel like that's one of the pros about real estate is it's never boring. It's never boring. Never boring.
SPEAKER_00So if you have a little ADD and we don't have any. I don't think this is the best job for people with ADD because you could be you could hit marketing therapist, negotiating, and um analyst in in all within 30 years.
SPEAKER_01Investigator.
SPEAKER_00An investigator. Sometimes we do need to do a little slow thing. Well, this is good to talk about some of these. I'm getting a little vulnerable, talking about now.
SPEAKER_02They're all depressed. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, it was great. Anxiety has been just part of who I am, and overcoming it and learning to work with it has made me a stronger person. I think a better realtor, a better mother. My son is going through anxiety like I did in my 20s, and I am able to help him. Which is so great. So, and you know, and your your your struggles with confidence and all of that is making you a stronger realtor. All of it is. And I can't wait to see where you are when you're 50. I know.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna look back at these podcasts.
SPEAKER_00I know.
SPEAKER_02It's my transformation.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_02And we'll see y'all next week. Yeah, and remember to like, comment.
HR To Real Estate: Transferable Skills
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and subscribe. And if you have something that you've overcome you want to share, just drop it in the comments. Yeah, we'd love to hear it. Whatever. We'd love to hear it.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. Until next week. We'll see y'all later. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next week.
SPEAKER_00Yes, so please like, subscribe, comment, share, follow, whatever it might be. Until next time.