Stan's Story: How I Got Into Real Estate

Some origin stories begin with a business plan. This one starts with a ten-cent menu. As a kid, the future host of Selling Greenville scribbled prices for PB&J and melted-cheese crackers, pitching “room service” to siblings and parents. It didn’t last long—profit margins on peanut butter are thin—but it revealed a mind that loved to build, try, and learn. That thread runs through everything that followed: a fascination with weather and storm chasing, a formative faith background, years in luxury transportation, flips and rentals, a detour through frozen yogurt, the baptism-by-fire of insurance adjusting, a health crisis that upended everything, and a podcast that ultimately became his most powerful marketing channel.

This is how Greenville Realtor® and investor Stan McCune found the work he loves—and why he still chooses being a full-time agent over chasing bigger margins as a full-time investor.

Unpacking Stan's Story

Stan's Story: The throughline isn’t a straight line at all. After an early love for meteorology (complete with weather books and storm-chaser daydreams), one high-school science unit snuffed out the spark. On the flip side, teachers in his Christian school encouraged a path toward ministry. That encouragement led to a scholarship at Bob Jones University in Greenville, where he earned a Bible evangelism degree with a counseling minor—plus a stack of psychology electives tucked inside the counseling track.

Graduating in 2008—in the teeth of the Great Recession—he stayed anchored to Greenville, dating the woman who would soon be his wife and looking for work that made sense in a chaotic economy. He joined a luxury transportation company that relocated from Atlanta to Greenville, starting as a dispatcher and rising to affiliate director for a global black-car network. The job clicked: responsibility, pace, and problem-solving. Life, meanwhile, moved fast—marriage, pregnancy, bills. The plan to preach went on hold, not out of lost conviction but because the work in front of him needed his full focus.

What never went away was the entrepreneurial itch.

From first flip to first license

His first glimpse of real estate wasn’t a spreadsheet—it was his own house. Negotiating hard on the purchase, hiring contractors, managing a remodel: it felt like flipping, and the process lit up every corner of his skillset. From there came a handful of flips per year, some rental properties, and even a few wholesale deals. Friends started asking for investment opinions. The pattern became obvious: he had a feel for value, condition, and opportunity.

While still in transportation, he earned his real estate license, leaning into the trust he’d built with people who already knew his work ethic and attention to detail. Business arrived slowly, as it often does in year one. And he made a non-negotiable choice early: no cold calling, no door knocking. He had done phone work as a student caller at Bob Jones and absolutely hated it. If this career was going to be sustainable, it had to align with how he’s wired, not grind him down the same way.

The frozen yogurt experiment (and the expensive lessons)

Slow ramp-up as a new agent led him to try a side business: he bought a failing frozen yogurt shop. He gave it a year, did everything he could to revive it, and ultimately sold it at a loss. The silver lining was clarity about his operating style. Total blank-canvas entrepreneurship (pricing, marketing, hiring, everything from scratch) wasn’t the right sandbox. Real estate, by contrast, offered guardrails and parameters that let him deploy creativity and discipline without drowning in infinite choices.

A hard hat he never expected: insurance adjusting

With real estate still growing and the yogurt experiment behind him, the bills didn’t pause. He got licensed as an insurance adjuster across the Southeast. Then two major storm events hit within weeks. At first, he didn’t feel ready. On the second—one that impacted Atlanta—firms started calling, rates jumped, and he deployed.

The learning curve was brutal. He worked a single week in Atlanta, slept 2–3 hours a night, documented obsessively, and earned $20,000—then stepped back, because the pace and software workload weren’t sustainable. He doubled down on training in Charlotte and shifted to part-time claims afterward, often tied to a major home improvement retailer when appliance installs went wrong and damaged a house.

Oddly enough, that side path made him a sharper Realtor®. From the curb, he could spot roofing issues (“that looks like a paintball gun hit quarter-size hail”), read water damage, and talk through the condition with clients using first-hand experience rather than guesswork.

When the ground moved: a health crisis and a reset

Then came 2020. After years of being told he had vasovagal syncope, he suffered a major seizure, was correctly diagnosed with epilepsy, and was barred from driving for six months. Real estate slowed to a crawl. Family members drove him to showings. Those lingering insurance claims helped keep the lights on.

When he was cleared to drive, the claims pipeline dried up. He faced a choice: keep chasing assignments or double down on real estate. He chose real estate—and that decision aligned with another unlikely gift from the same season.

The podcast that changed the business

Grounded at home during the no-driving stretch, he finally had time to build something he’d been thinking about for ages: content. He bought a mic, opened GarageBand (familiar from a college roommate’s coaching), and launched the Selling Greenville podcast. What started as a constraint-born project became his most powerful marketing tool. A huge percentage of closings, directly or indirectly, flow from it now.

He’s also deeply grateful that the diagnosis was corrected early in 2020. With the right medication, he hasn’t had a seizure since February 2020. The clarity, the routine, the focus—all of it supports the business he loves.

Why does he still choose being a Realtor® over being “just” an investor

Here’s the paradox most investors recognize: bigger profits often live on the investing side. He knows that. He also knows that he prefers representing people—helping them buy and sell—more than he enjoys the stress profile of flips. He still invests (selectively) and still takes on flips or rentals that fit his parameters, but he’s not out blasting “we buy houses” postcards or papering intersections with signs. Deals can come to him; the day job is serving clients.

Over time, he also set boundaries with would-be investors who picked his brain for free and then tried to source off-market deals without him. The investor pipeline remains valuable, but it’s curated—because attention and energy are finite, and the retail business deserves both.

What “work you’re meant to do” looks like in Greenville

Looking back, the winding path makes sense. The childhood menu was the first proof of concept. The storm-chasing curiosity turned into a lifelong habit of noticing patterns. The Bible program shaped his ability to study deeply, communicate clearly, and care about people. Transportation taught him systems, scale, and composure at speed. The yogurt shop taught him what not to build. Insurance adjusting taught him to see houses with an inspector’s eye. The podcast gave him a voice and a platform.

Today, he’s settled into the lane that uses all of it. If he chased only ROI, he’d walk away from client service and flip full-time. He won’t. He enjoys being a Realtor® more than he enjoys the highest upside-down math problem. That preference is the point. It’s why clients show up—and come back.

Along the way, he continues to remind listeners to check the show notes for contact details, to subscribe, and to leave a quick five-star rating where the app allows (Apple Podcasts requires opening the app itself, not just a web preview; Spotify supports ratings, too). The ask is simple, because the pod isn’t a vanity project; it’s the conversation where clients meet him long before a first showing.

And if anyone wonders where to start with his story, the answer is simple: start with the work. That’s where the throughline always was.

Watch Or Listen To The Selling Greenville Podcast

Subscribe to the Selling Greenville podcast for real-time insights, bold perspectives, and unfiltered takes on the Upstate housing scene. Whether you’re buying, selling, or simply watching the market unfold—this is where Greenville goes to stay informed.

Bottom Line

This Greenville realtor origin story isn’t a straight-shot hustle highlight. It’s a set of honest pivots: from ministry studies to global transportation, from first flip to first license, from frozen yogurt to field-tested insurance adjusting, from a health scare to a microphone—and then to a real estate business built on service, not scripts.

He could chase bigger margins in full-time investing; he chooses the day-to-day of guiding buyers and sellers. That’s the story: try, learn, refine, and keep doing the work you actually like. In Greenville, that’s how a life—and a real estate practice—come together.

Ien Araneta

Journal & Podcast Editor | Selling Greenville