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Matt Holm moved to Austin more than a decade and a half ago when the Texas capital was a comparative backwater. Not long after, in 2008, he became a real estate agent.

Matt Holm

It was a tough time to relocate and start a new career in a recession-beleaguered field, but somehow, Holm made it work. In fact, he made it work really well. Today, he leads a 10-person team at Compass and has managed to rack up accolades for performing at the top of the industry.

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Holm will appear on stage next month during Inman Connect Austin. In advance of that appearance, he recently spoke with Inman about how he managed to find success. And the big takeaway from this conversation was simple: According to Holm, his one rule for real estate is to do things that are fun. When that happens, people — and business — will come naturally.

What follows is a version of that conversation that has been edited for length and clarity.

Inman: You’re going to be on stage at Connect Austin. What message do you want to share with the attendees there?

So my appearance is going to be a little Austin-specific, Texas-specific. And if you look historically in Austin, when we got here 16 years ago I would have called us tech-lite. Apple was here, but it was like international customer service. And Google was getting here, but it was sort of just an HR. We had homegrown Dell. We had Texas Instruments, but, you know, it wasn’t as heavy.

I think there were six high-rises when we moved here, and we parked at the fanciest restaurant downtown in a dirt parking lot and went to a chain surf and turf. And my wife, who’s from Europe and is used to seeing some nice architecture, said, “This is really a business center. This isn’t a downtown.” And I’m like, “Well, just wait, honey. You’ll see what’s going to happen.”

So I made a lot of people a lot of money by basically using my crystal ball and staying connected with tech in particular, because if you think about it, what’s the backbone of the U.S. economy? What do we produce? It’s tech. It’s Google, it’s Apple, it’s Tesla, it’s SpaceX.

Talk to me about how you built a network in those early days when Austin was sleepier.

I went full-time into real estate in July of 2008. And if you recall, that was a rather poor time for getting into real estate. People are like, “Wait, you’re leaving California?” We were in Belmont Shore in California.

I had a first broker that said, “We’re in an economic downturn for real estate. The big companies that are national builders that are building in Texas are not going to take their cash pivot and turn into Amazon or Google. They have to put butts in houses. And guess what they’re going to do? They’re going to incentivize anyone that can bring them business.

So what you need to do is find neighborhoods where they’re struggling, where they have 50, 100 homes sitting on the market. And you need to go work on incentives that are real-world benefits for your clients. Get closing costs paid for, find zero-down loans.”

And I found some neighborhoods outside of Austin with $110,000 to $130,000 new construction homes, which was possible at the time. And I would go out at night with no budget and make paper copies. I’d say, “I will buy you out of your lease. I will get you a zero-down loan program. I will, with tax benefits, beat what your rent is currently.” I’d have to put out a thousand flyers to get people to come out in droves.

I’d put flyers or signs along the side of the highway with balloons on them that said free margaritas and snacks, free phone giveaway — anything I could do to get the car to stop. And then people would walk in the door and they would come with one objection after another. And they couldn’t come up with one that I couldn’t solve.

So using this formula, I actually sold five homes my first month in the business and sold 54 my first year.

Talk to me about how your interests and hobbies intersect with your business, and how you make that work in a way that feels authentic.

The first rule, and only rule of thumb, is that I don’t do anything that’s not fun. People want to hang around and have fun. And you need to think about what are the things that I love doing? What do I have fun doing? What brings me joy?

I hate the word networking. I hate all these acronyms that make it sound artificial. Go have fun and make friends doing something that you’re passionate about.

I founded the Tesla Owners of Austin Club. I got my first Tesla, it was $120,000 in 2013. I was driving a three-year-old Porsche. It was my dream car. I thought I’d never drive anything else.

Then I got this Tesla, and my Porsche sat for months and never got driven.

I got an invite to go to the Capitol in 2013, and I happened to sit behind Elon Musk, waiting for our turn to give testimony [on eliminating the franchise model for car sales]. He turned around and said, “Hey, I saw you on the news. I wanted to say thanks, and is there anything I can do for you?”

And I said, “You want to come to my car and sign my sun visor and my license plate?”

A few of us went out for happy hour afterward who had met at the Capitol, and then I threw a big party at my house that summer. That became the infancy of the club. It just came out of a passion that I had for this vehicle. We throw parties. That turned from, you know, 50 people at my house the first year to a hundred people the second year to 300 the third year.

Has it turned into business? Absolutely. But it’s not like I went out going, “I’m going to join this club so I can wear a dumb name badge and try to get people to remember I’m a Realtor.”

I built what I’ve done one person at a time, one passion at a time.

It was the same thing when I moved to Westlake. About 10 of us started this Westlake Dads club. We went to school, these dads that had kind of a more of a free schedule, and we’re like, man, the janitors don’t do a good job power washing the limestone on the north wall. Or, those flower beds look kind of sad. And hey, I own a nursery. I can bring in decomposed granite. And we can power wash the walls. That was something where we saw a need, and we filled it. And I’ve got amazing friends from 12 years ago.

A couple of years ago I had a heart event, and I decided I needed to walk five miles a day to just get in better shape. And I’ve collected an awesome group of dudes once again who are available from eight to 10 in the morning. I block out my meetings, and we walk around.

My expectation is not that every one of these guys is going to buy a house with me. Some of these guys are connected with friends they’ve used for 20 years. I don’t care. That’s fine. But you know, if there’s a need and they see another friend, they’re like, “Oh, you should talk to my buddy, Matt. Why? Because I see them every day on the trail.”

I think the more fun you’re having, the more business you’ll get.

Let’s pivot to the new rules in the industry that just rolled out last month. Are they having much of an impact on you or your team?

It’s a topic that comes up frequently. My director of operations definitely has more documents for buyers to sign before they come meet with me. And it’s a conversation to have with my sellers. A few of them have said, “Oh, we don’t have to pay commissions anymore.”

And I’m like, “Well, if you’d like to sell your home…”

Really the buyer has always funded the commissions from the money they’re bringing to the table. Now they have to bring all that money to the table. The loan, the origination fees, the escrows, and then you want them to pay 3 percent on top of it. So they’ve got to come up with 20 percent down plus another 6 percent by the time you factor in escrows and commissions. So there are buyers out there telling their agents, “Hey, if someone’s not offering [commission], I don’t want to see it.”

Here in Austin, at least, I have not seen anyone that hasn’t offered it. Of course, you need to ask them, “Hey, what do you offer on commissions?”

The other thing is this really discriminates against first-time homebuyers and folks in the low middle class that want to buy a house, because there are going to be flat fees. But what kind of representation is that?

I mean, when I’m working with a buyer and my fiduciary responsibility is to get them the best deal and I’ve done it 1600 times, they’re going to get a more aggressive agent on the buying side that is going to set them up and knows how to negotiate all the way through. I guarantee they’re saving a lot more than the 3 percent by using me or a good agent who has experience.

Email Jim Dalrymple II