Sit Down With Success A Conversation with Matt Curtis of Matt Curtis Real Estate

Sit Down With Success: A Conversation with Matt Curtis of Matt Curtis Real Estate

The Sit Down With Success is a monthly series provided by the Huntsville Business Journal that focuses on successful small businesses in the Huntsville/Madison County area and their keys to success. For this month, the Huntsville Business Journal sat down with Matt Curtis of Matt Curtis Real Estate. 

Cover image provided by Steve Babin of Steve Babin Photography. 

The Matt Curtis Real Estate team has received many accolades over the years. The team has a significant marketing presence in the area, with Matt Curtis Real Estate billboards along many North Alabama thoroughfares.

But behind the awards and the billboards is Matt Curtis himself – a former sales engineer, husband to his high school sweetheart and father to three. The Knoxville native and University of Tennessee graduate moved to Alabama 19 years ago, to sell test equipment to NASA and the U.S. Army. Since that time he has created his real estate team and helped thousands of people buy and sell homes while giving back to the community.

The Huntsville Business Journal recently sat down with Curtis to talk about his career journey and the joys and challenges of owning a business.

How did you get started in real estate?

We were building a house at the time with a local builder, and they offered me a position to go into real estate. I started around June of that year and almost became their top salesperson, working half of the year.

Our parents both thought we were crazy because I’m very much an introvert. They thought we were going to go bankrupt, but to God be the glory, the first year almost sold more than anybody else in the company. I did that job for about three and a half years, and the Great Recession came.

God called me to open Matt Curtis Real Estate, which doesn’t make sense, opening a business during probably one of the slowest times to sell real estate, but it was definitely God’s timing and it’s been a blessing ever since.

What was your goal when you started your business?

I wanted to control the customer experience, and I wanted to control the integrity level of the business. I went out and got 20 listings really quickly, but nothing would sell on the listing side during the Great Recession, so I ended up finding, by God’s grace, a marketing program on the buyer side and found a great mentor who poured into me. His name was Howard Tager and that really helped take our company and grow it in those Great Recession years and to the business that you see today.

What are the challenges that you’ve faced as a business owner?

The biggest challenges have been in the last couple of years. Honestly, anything that could go wrong went wrong in a lot of ways, and it was really through God’s grace that he brought us through that. I tried a lot of things with my own knowledge and wisdom, and nothing really seemed to move the needle.

We stayed very stagnant. We still had very successful years, but not to the level of success that we wanted to have. Literally, all it took was one person speaking a word over me and going on a three day fast, and in that time I had more revelations and a better plan for the business than the entire two year period. For me it was getting back to reigniting our faith.

How did you accomplish becoming the number one real estate team in Alabama?

Through a lot of prayer, a lot of guidance from God, and honestly it’s all to Him be the glory for how our team has grown. We believe one plus one equals three. Through the leverage of teamwork you’re able to achieve so much more when you’re working together.

The analogy I always like to give is if you went to a restaurant and the same person greeted you and cooked your food and took your order and bussed the table, you probably would never go back, not because they’re not a great person, it’s just too many jobs for them. That’s the same thing in real estate. There’s too many jobs that the real estate agent tries to juggle.

We bring a lot of teamwork and a lot of different admin support to our agents to provide better levels of service for our clients, and with that, we have more five star reviews than any other real estate company in Alabama.

What is your vision with marketing?

We love having fun with marketing. We want to have a dominant marketing presence in the public but we like to have it twofold. One is just repetition and impressions, but we also like to dive into what other people are talking about in the mainstream. So if there’s a Top Gun movie or Star Wars movie or something that people are already talking about, we like to ride that wave of public knowledge to amplify that message. We’re always looking for creative ideas because it gets old looking at the same billboard over and over again.

How do you balance work and personal life?

One of our core values for our team is we believe in balance, so our faith and our family always come first. When you have a flat tire in one area of life, like your family, it’s going to affect everything else, and so as you get your walk with God right, it’s going to help everything else flow in the right way. It’s not only balancing; sometimes it’s counter balancing.

There are seasons where you have to put more work in either, whether it be family or work, but you just can’t stay in that season. You’ve got to balance it back out because if you don’t do that you’re going to get a flat tire somewhere else in your life, and it’s not worth having business success to have a family failure.

What type of advice might you have for someone looking to go out on their own?

First and foremost, prayer and getting confirmation from others that that’s the right thing that they should be doing. Find a mentor. What I found is that a lot of successful people are happy to mentor, but there are a lot of people who aren’t willing to put the work in that the mentor asks of them. If you will actually do the work, you’ll find people who are willing to invest in you.

What do you like most about being a business owner?

I always knew that I wanted to start a business, and this was the business that I was called to. What I like most about it is when we have an idea, we can implement it. I don’t want to have to get approval from somebody else. I want to get approval from God and go do it. I also like the impact that we’re able to make, whether it be giving back to Kids to Love or building homes for families in Nicaragua. I like that we can be a blessing to others in those ways.