Most people in real estate build their business once. Megan VonDeylen built hers twice. And if you ask her, the first version barely counted, because she was building it as someone else.
Megan is the broker and owner of Stone Realty Group in Michigan. She got her license in 2008, during one of the worst markets in modern real estate history, and spent a decade building a business that looked successful from the outside. Awards. Top of her brokerage. A full pipeline. But the person running that business was wearing cardigans and slipping off shoes at listing appointments and keeping her mouth shut in client meetings. It worked. It just wasn’t her.
She left real estate when her family needed her. Came back through corporate. Outperformed every benchmark she was given. Hit ceilings she couldn’t see coming. And then left again, walked into a plant manager’s office, said she wasn’t coming back, and built her brokerage for the second time. This time, she wore the ball cap.
The First Version: Following Someone Else’s Blueprint
When Megan entered real estate in 2008, her broker told her exactly how to show up. What to wear. How to speak. What kind of agent to be. And because that is what new agents are told to do, she did it.
For ten years, she built slowly. Three young kids. A household to run. A husband whose combat PTSD was worsening. She worked part-time while the kids were small and grew into full-time as they got older. By her tenth year, she was top of her brokerage at Century 21. Successful by every external measure.
But her broker’s blueprint had one critical gap: it told her who to be, not how to build systems. When the business finally demanded her full attention, there was no infrastructure underneath it. Just hustle and a persona that had never quite fit.
"I built it based on what I was told I was supposed to do.
I did what my broker told me, acted like she told me to, talked like she told me to, dressed like she told me to — because that's what she said I had to do."
— Megan VonDeylen
Then her husband’s condition reached a crisis point. He was checked into a VA facility. The doctors told her he might be there permanently. Megan made what felt like the only logical choice: she left real estate to take a corporate job that offered stable hours and health insurance.
Corporate: Where She Thrived Until She Couldn’t
Megan didn’t just survive in corporate. She dominated it. In every department she managed, the numbers improved. She turned around operations faster than her employers expected, earned recognition that went straight to senior leadership, and was headhunted into a materials management role where she brought 24 of 25 production lines online within 90 days. Their original goal for that period was 12.
But outperforming in corporate comes with its own set of ceilings, and Megan kept running into them. At her first company, her path to advancement was blocked by a policy that prevented her from being a manager over her husband, who also worked there. At her second, a direct supervisor canceled a vendor payment without telling her, leaving Megan looking incompetent to the people she was managing and responsible for, and then the plant manager told her straight: her supervisor felt threatened by what she was doing.
"I can't work in that kind of an environment.
She said to me, honestly, that's going to keep happening because she is threatened by what you've done,
and she feels like you're going to surpass her very quickly."
— Megan VonDeylen
Megan walked in that same day and told the plant manager she wasn’t coming back. And then she went back to real estate, this time with something she hadn’t had before: a clear sense of what she would not compromise on.
The Second Version: Building on Her Own Foundation
When Megan returned to real estate, she joined eXp and started over. But the architecture of the second version was fundamentally different. Not just the brokerage model. The person running it.
She wore what she actually wore. Ball cap at listing appointments. Jean jacket. Boots outside, slip-ons inside. Tattoos visible. The energy she brought into a showing was the same energy she brought into her own kitchen. And instead of spending mental bandwidth managing her image, she could think about what her clients actually needed.
"It has been so much better for my clients because I am not censoring and auditing myself the entire time I'm talking with them.
I'm actually free to think about what's best for them in the transaction."
— Megan VonDeylen
The business grew around referrals and trust. She got her broker’s license, opened Stone Realty Group, and began building the team she had always been capable of leading.
She also developed a specialty that didn’t come from a marketing strategy. It came from her life. Megan had married a combat veteran. Had navigated VA loans in a market where they were notoriously difficult to use. Had watched legislative changes slowly improve the process, and had stayed involved enough to help shape some of them. Because she couldn’t serve in the military herself due to hearing loss, she made a decision: she would serve those who did.
"Because I couldn't serve, I try to serve those who did serve."
— Megan VonDeylen
The Ceiling She Built for Herself
Megan is quick to name what she’s built. She’s also quick to name what she hasn’t, yet.
Her brokerage is in its fifth year. She has one agent. Not her daughter, not the friend who encouraged her to open the business. A woman who called her out of nowhere because someone spoke highly of her. The two of them aligned on integrity and goals, and that was enough.
But Megan knows the brokerage needs to grow. Her speaking and instruction work is pulling her out of Michigan. She can’t open doors for inspections and be in Denver or New Orleans at the same time. She needs people she can trust to run the operation while she’s gone.
The thing stopping her isn’t a market problem or a recruitment problem. It’s imposter syndrome. The same voice that told her she wasn’t qualified to help a client at a $435,000 price point is telling her she can’t build and lead a full team, even though she mentored agents to six-figure GCI in their first year at eXp, and one of them to seven figures within five years.
"Successful people use it as a drive.
The folks who listen to it too much are the ones that get held in the same place their entire lives.
They're content with less because they listened to that imposter syndrome."
— Megan VonDeylen
She knows this. She said it herself. And in the same breath, she admitted she hasn’t fully figured out how to get past it yet. That honesty is exactly the kind of thing you don’t usually hear from people who have already done as much as she has.
What She Would Tell Herself on Day One
At the end of every episode of Outside the Corporate Box, the hosts ask The Last Question. This episode, it was this: what would you go back and tell yourself on day one?
Megan’s answer was immediate.
"The biggest thing I needed to tell myself from day one is to have that belief in myself.
That's a big part of where the imposter syndrome comes in.
One of the reasons I've gotten as far as I have is because my husband believes in me more than I do."
— Megan VonDeylen
Believe in yourself more than you think you need to. That’s the instruction. Not a strategy or a system. A decision you have to keep making, over and over, especially when the evidence around you says you’re qualified and the voice inside says you’re not.
Three Things Worth Carrying From This Episode
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- Authenticity is not a soft skill. For Megan, showing up as herself freed her to actually focus on her clients. The mental energy she had been spending on managing her image became client service energy. That is a direct business outcome.
- The ceilings you build for yourself are just as real as the ones others build above you. Megan named both with equal clarity. She recognized the pattern in corporate because she had felt it in her first brokerage. And she recognized it again in her own leadership behavior today.
- Failure is only feedback if you decide it is. Megan’s version of this came from her father: if you stop learning, you die. She applied it to every career pivot, every setback, every unexpected cost of building something real. It is not a motivational poster. It is the operating system she has run on for two decades.
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Outside the Corporate Box airs every Monday on all major podcast platforms and YouTube. Share this episode with someone who is in the middle of their own reinvention moment.
Guest Bio:
Megan VonDeylen is the broker and owner of Stone Realty Group in Michigan, a real estate educator, and a specialist in veteran homeownership. She entered real estate in 2008, built her career through two departures and two returns, and launched her own brokerage after nearly two decades in the industry. She holds a degree in accounting and a degree in finance and business management, both earned while simultaneously selling real estate, raising three children, and managing her household through her husband’s combat PTSD. She mentored multiple agents to six-figure GCI in their first year and one to seven-figure GCI within five years. She is also a co-founder of a youth rodeo operation and an active advocate for veteran homeownership.
Connect with Megan: https://meganvondeylen.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganvondeylen