Preparation matters.
Standards matter.

In a lot of ways, I was initially drawn to real estate for the same reason I would later choose the Air Force when deciding which Special Operations career to pursue: I looked up to my big brother.

My brother John had served as a C-130 crew chief before beginning his own career in real estate. Watching him build something for himself after leaving the military gave me an early example of what a career built around personal responsibility, service, and performance could look like.

I became licensed in North Carolina in 2017 and joined my family’s real estate team, BoomTown Real Estate Group, with Coldwell Banker Triad Realtors in Winston-Salem. My brother led the listing side of the business, my sister and I worked primarily with buyers, and my mom managed transactions.

In our strongest year, the team closed roughly 20 to 30 transactions, split fairly evenly between buyers and sellers.

One of my clearest memories from those years is earning my first listing. My mom and I gave the presentation together, and when we walked out with a signed listing agreement, I could see the pride in her eyes. There are bigger transactions and more impressive numbers in real estate, but that moment has always stuck with me.

Those early years gave me an education in both sides of a real estate transaction—prospecting, property marketing, working with buyers and sellers, negotiating, and helping clients navigate everything between the first conversation and the closing table.

They also taught me lessons I still carry with me today: the importance of building a network of exceptional referral partners, the value of clearly defined roles, and the integral role that pricing and positioning play—especially when the market is difficult.

Great results come from preparation and from people who take responsibility for one another.

In 2021, at 29 years old, I stepped away from real estate to pursue a very different challenge and joined the United States Air Force with the goal of entering Air Force Special Operations.

That decision actually began with running.

After years of watching my other brother, Doug, run every day, I finally decided to get off the couch and start running myself. It became an obsession pretty quickly. As soon as one distance became manageable, I wanted to know what came next.

Eventually, I decided I was going to sign up for my first marathon.

Instead, I signed up for the Air Force.

The thought that triggered the change was simple: “Okay, you run a marathon. What’s next?”

Once I asked myself that question, I knew the next challenge needed to mean something beyond proving that I could do something difficult. I wanted it to serve a greater purpose. More importantly, I realized I needed to adjust the scale of what I was aiming for—to aim higher, as it were.

My original goal was to become an Air Force Pararescueman. Then I met the superintendent of my Special Warfare preparatory class, who was essentially a walking anime character and happened to be a Combat Controller.

After hearing him explain the mission, I changed direction.

Combat Control combined the physical standards and Special Operations environment I was looking for with something that immediately appealed to the way my brain works: taking complicated pieces, creating order, communicating clearly, and making decisions when the situation around you is moving quickly.

I was by far the oldest guy in my Basic Military Training flight. The older guys tend to find themselves in leadership positions, and I was selected as an Element Leader. Fortunately, I managed not to get fired, and that leadership role helped me earn Honor Graduate recognition.

What followed was nearly three years of selection and specialized training.

After selection and pre-dive training, I attended Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia, where my sister Rose had the chance to pin my wings on me. From there came Combat Dive School and Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training before I headed to Pope Army Airfield in North Carolina for Special Warfare Air Traffic Control School.

There, I graduated with distinction and earned recognition as the course’s Top Controller.

The Combat Control skill set that resonated most deeply with me—and one of the reasons I performed so well as an air traffic controller—is the ability to turn absolute chaos into total control.

A Combat Controller may be integrating aircraft overhead, ground forces below, competing timelines, changing conditions, and imperfect information simultaneously. It takes a master communicator to synchronize those pieces, simplify what matters, solve problems, and achieve the intended result.

That mindset has never really left me.

After air traffic control school, I took the scenic route through the Combat Controller Apprentice Course. My first attempt was, to put it mildly, a disaster.

I repeated the course.

In August of 2023, after years of training and no shortage of setbacks, I finally earned the Combat Control red beret.

That experience probably taught me as much as any success I had along the way. Preparation matters. Standards matter. Failure is information. And sometimes the difference between the person who succeeds and the person who does not is simply the willingness to come back better prepared.

After a short vacation at Yuma Proving Ground for Military Freefall training, I spent roughly a year and a half stationed in the Fort Walton Beach area of Florida.

Even while continuing my military upgrade training, real estate was never far from my mind. I pursued additional real estate education during that assignment and came close to completing the Florida licensing requirements between training iterations.

I later returned to Pope Army Airfield to complete Static Line Jumpmaster School in early 2026 before finishing my active-duty career at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, as a Staff Sergeant.

During my final chapter in the Air Force, I was trusted with leadership responsibilities above my rank, first as a team leader and later overseeing my squadron’s training flight. I also received the John L. Levitow Award for excellence in leadership.

Those years reinforced the principles that now shape the way I serve my real estate clients: prepare thoroughly, communicate clearly, remain calm when circumstances change, take ownership of the outcome, and never stop improving.

Real estate obviously isn’t a Special Operations mission, and I don’t pretend that it is.

But the underlying skill of taking a complicated situation, identifying what actually matters, organizing the moving pieces, and communicating a clear plan translates remarkably well.

Selling a home can involve pricing, preparation, contractors, photography, media, showings, negotiations, financing, inspection issues, appraisal questions, deadlines, and emotions—all happening at the same time.

My job is to turn that noise into a plan.

When it was time to transition from active-duty service, returning to residential real estate was an intentional decision.

So was choosing JBGoodwin REALTORS®.

I was fortunate to have a former teammate who had successfully completed the Department of Defense SkillBridge program. Once I decided to separate from active duty, I knew I wanted to use SkillBridge, but finding the right organization took months of research, planning, conversations, and interviews.

Initially, I planned to pursue contract work and practice real estate on the side.

The more I thought about it, though, the more the same mentality that had gotten me through selection kept bothering me.

Burn the boats.

If I believed I could build something meaningful in real estate, I needed to stop constructing an escape route and bet on myself.

JBGoodwin was initially just another phone call in that process.

Then I interviewed with Erin Cestero.

Having the president of the company—and someone with decades of credibility in the business—personally spend time talking with a SkillBridge prospect told me something important about the organization immediately. This was a company that placed a premium on recruiting, developing, and investing in people.

That conversation, combined with my own research, made choosing JBGoodwin a no-brainer.

The day-to-day experience in the office has reinforced that decision ever since.

Choosing San Antonio was equally personal.

I met my wife here while I was stationed in San Antonio during the early years of my Special Warfare training. We now have a young son together, and being close to her family was an important consideration as we planned our transition out of military life.

But somewhere along the way, I also fell in love with the city in addition to falling in love in the city.

When it came time to buy our own home, we chose the Monticello Park Historic District.

Our house immediately stood out to us because it combined the things I love about older San Antonio homes with the practicality of a thoughtful renovation. Historic character, dramatic black columns, an updated interior, and the feeling when you pulled up that you were looking at a piece of old San Antonio.

It also had an unfinished casita, which appealed to my continuing interest in real estate investment and owner-occupied income strategies and the opportunity to improve a property over time.

But the house itself is only part of why Monticello Park became home.

We had barely pulled in with the moving truck when one of our neighbors walked over, introduced herself, and welcomed us to the neighborhood.

It wasn’t a one-off interaction.

Very quickly, I knew nearly everyone on my block by name.

That sense of community, combined with our proximity to Woodlawn Lake, is what made me genuinely passionate about this part of San Antonio.

Continuous community investment has turned Woodlawn Lake into one of the city’s great public spaces. Walking my son to the park, running around the lake, and stopping for genuine conversations with neighbors who quickly became friends are the kinds of everyday experiences that make this little pocket of San Antonio worth advocating for.

That experience deepened my connection to the city.

I believe in San Antonio not simply as a real estate market, but as a collection of neighborhoods, communities, and places where people build their lives.

I also understand what it feels like to arrive here because the military sent you.

Having moved my own family across the country multiple times and personally navigated the VA home-buying process, I feel a genuine obligation to help fellow service members and military families make the process easier.

A Permanent Change of Station already comes with enough moving pieces.

Orders, reporting dates, household goods, schools, childcare, spouses’ careers, unfamiliar neighborhoods, financing, and the mission itself all compete for attention at the same time.

My role is to streamline the real estate side of that equation so military clients can focus on everything else.

Explore my San Antonio military PCS guides ↗

Today, my primary focus is helping San Antonio homeowners create the strongest possible position when it is time to sell.

For me, being a Residential Listing Specialist means much more than putting a property into the MLS and waiting for buyers to find it.

There are exactly three things that cause a home to sell quickly and for the most money the market will support:

Pricing.

Condition.

Presentation.

If we can agree on pricing and develop a plan for the property’s condition, my job is to make the presentation second to none.

My background has also given me an uncommon perspective on real estate marketing.

Near the end of my military career, I had an opportunity to work around drones and immediately knew I wanted to incorporate that capability into my real estate business.

I earned my FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate and launched Brick & Bearing Aerial Media as a companion to my real estate business.

The idea behind Brick & Bearing is straightforward: elevated listing media should be more broadly available.

Traditionally, it can become cost-prohibitive to market anything beyond the walls of the property unless the home is firmly in the luxury category. Yet buyers are never purchasing only square footage.

They are buying a street.

A neighborhood.

A commute.

A school district.

A park they can walk to.

A coffee shop down the road.

A place within the larger city.

Brick & Bearing was built to make it practical to tell that full story through professional photography, aerial imagery, video, floor plans, property websites, and neighborhood-level perspective.

Before every listing appointment, I build a property-specific website and begin preparing that digital asset for search.

If we ultimately sign a listing agreement, that website becomes the central destination for the property’s marketing.

I call the strategy Buyer-Specific Marketing.

It starts by identifying the buyer priorities the property is best positioned to answer—based on price point, features, location, use case, and current competition—then building the campaign around those reasons to buy.

Photography, video, neighborhood information, search, open-house or event promotion, social media, digital advertising, and buyer inquiries can all point back to one clear destination.

Just as importantly, those efforts can be tracked and measured.

That allows us to stop guessing about how buyers are responding and start making better decisions using actual feedback.

Elevated media paired with genuine positioning of the property—as opposed to a list-it-and-forget-it mentality—is what sets my philosophy apart.

From photography and aerial imagery to video and the overall presentation of a property, I believe great listing marketing should help buyers understand not only the home, but the lifestyle and location surrounding it.

More importantly, I believe a seller should be able to see the value of their agent’s marketing strategy—not simply hear a list of things that will happen after they sign a listing agreement.

That is why much of my work begins before I ever ask someone to hire me.

I want a homeowner to understand how I see their property, how I would position it, who I believe the likely buyer is, where our opportunities are, and what the marketing could look like before we make a decision together.

Whether I’m helping a homeowner determine how to prepare a property for sale, developing a marketing strategy for a new listing, helping a military family navigate a PCS, evaluating an investment opportunity, or simply answering questions before someone is ready to make a decision, my goal is the same:

Provide clear information, thoughtful preparation, candid guidance, and a level of service that earns trust.

I’m fiercely competitive, but primarily with the person I was yesterday.

I want to keep improving, keep learning from the people around me, and eventually use what I build to develop others.

My 100-meter target is to build and develop the top-performing real estate team in San Antonio.

My 500-meter target is bigger: build an interstate, concierge military relocation real estate organization capable of helping service members and their families transition between duty stations with continuity, competence, and someone they trust on both ends of the move.

For me, real estate is not simply about completing transactions.

It is about becoming the kind of San Antonio real estate advisor people trust when the decision in front of them genuinely matters.