Closing Deals Starts with the Belief That You Can
September 9, 2026
September 9, 2026
Every great closing begins long before the paperwork.
For George Hanold, Co-Founder of Times Real Estate CA, it begins with belief.
In April 2026, George took the stage at Side x Side 2026, Side's annual real estate community conference, held April 14–16 at the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort in Huntington Beach, California.
The setting was particularly fitting. Times Real Estate CA is a Newport Beach-based boutique brokerage serving Orange County, making this year's Side x Side conference a major industry event taking place right in Times' backyard.
Side described the three-day Huntington Beach gathering as an opportunity for its real estate community to learn from one another, recharge, exchange ideas, and strengthen industry connections. The 2026 theme, "Making Waves," focused on leadership, creativity, authenticity, challenging convention, and moving the real estate industry forward.
George's message fit naturally into that conversation.
His session, "Closing Deals Starts with the Belief That You Can," explored something deeper than sales scripts or closing techniques:
How does what you believe before a negotiation influence what happens during it?
Drawing from his experience negotiating and closing real estate transactions in one of the country's most competitive luxury markets, George shared a simple framework built around three principles:
Together, they offer a different way to think about confidence, negotiation, problem-solving—and what it actually takes to close.
There was additional significance to George presenting this message in Huntington Beach.
George and his sister and business partner, Regan Beegle, have spent years representing buyers and sellers throughout Orange County, from Newport Beach and Newport Coast to Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Irvine, Tustin and other communities.
For Side x Side 2026, Side itself tapped George Hanold and Regan Beegle as local Orange County experts, along with fellow Side partner Christine DiCarlo, to help curate its guide to Huntington Beach for conference attendees.
The recommendations gave visiting real estate professionals a local introduction to restaurants, coffee shops and destinations around Surf City—a fitting role for the Times Real Estate CA founders: welcoming members of the broader real estate community to the market they know and serve.
Times' involvement in the local Side x Side experience extended beyond the conference sessions as well.
Times Real Estate CA Executive Assistant Michelle Fulton, in partnership with Heyler Realty agent Jae Wu, hosted a Beach Volleyball session that brought conference attendees onto the sand for connection, friendly competition and a quintessential Huntington Beach experience.
The setting couldn't have been much more local. Huntington Beach's beach volleyball courts have welcomed some of the sport's most recognizable names, including Phil Dalhausser, Sean Rosenthal, Kerri Walsh Jennings, Misty May-Treanor and April Ross. Side x Side attendees had an opportunity to step onto the sand themselves and experience one of the activities most closely associated with Southern California's beach culture.
It added another dimension to what Side x Side was designed to accomplish. The conference wasn't only about what happened on stage. It was also about community, relationships and shared experiences—values that translate directly to the relationship-driven nature of real estate.
For Times Real Estate CA, having Side x Side held at the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort made the 2026 conference particularly meaningful. It was an opportunity for the Times team to contribute to a larger real estate conversation while also helping welcome professionals from across the Side community to Orange County.
And inside the conference, George had an opportunity to contribute something else: lessons learned from years spent solving real-world transaction problems in this market.
From left to right: Michael Brulles (Realtor), Regan Beegle (Co-Founder/Broker), George Hanold (Co-Founder) & Michelle Fulton (Executive Assistant)
Times Real Estate CA's relationship with Side is an important part of the story.
Side describes itself as a real estate brokerage platform built to support top-producing agents, teams and independent brokers in building and growing their own companies. Rather than replacing the local company's identity, Side operates behind the scenes as broker of record while providing technology, operational infrastructure and other support.
Today, Side says its platform supports more than 500 companies, and more than 80% of its partners were named among America's Best in 2026.
For Times Real Estate CA, that structure allows the company to maintain the boutique, locally focused Times brand while benefiting from the infrastructure and community of a much larger real estate platform.
Side x Side is the annual gathering where that broader community comes together.
The 2026 Huntington Beach conference featured general sessions, breakout sessions, networking and leadership programming, with Harvard professor and bestselling author Arthur C. Brooks serving as keynote speaker.
Being invited to contribute to that conversation gave George an opportunity to share a philosophy that has helped shape the way he approaches business at Times.
George's first principle was Identity.
Real estate professionals have access to more external tools than ever before: technology, market data, scripts, CRMs, artificial intelligence, lead-generation platforms, coaching and sophisticated marketing systems.
Those resources can absolutely make an agent better.
But George challenged attendees to consider a different problem:
What happens when the obstacle isn't external?
You can have the best tools in the industry and still walk into an appointment believing you aren't capable of winning it.
His message was to stop looking exclusively for external solutions to internal problems.
Success sometimes requires confronting the internal stories of inadequacy or unworthiness that influence how we behave—and instead owning the identity of someone capable of finding a solution and closing the deal.
That isn't about pretending every deal will close.
It is about believing that when an obstacle appears, your job is to look for the path through it.
There is an important difference between walking into a negotiation thinking:
"I hope I can do this."
and:
"There is a solution here. Let's find it."
George's second principle was Story.
Everyone enters a negotiation carrying a narrative.
"The seller will never agree."
"There are too many other buyers."
"The numbers don't work."
"The other agent has all the leverage."
"This deal is dead."
The danger comes when assumptions become conclusions.
George's challenge was simple:
Change the narrative and you begin changing the questions you ask.
Instead of:
"Why won't this work?"
ask:
"What would have to happen for this to work?"
Instead of:
"They'll never agree."
ask:
"What is actually important to the other party?"
Instead of:
"We've run out of options."
ask:
"What haven't we considered yet?"
This is the shift from problem-oriented thinking to solution-oriented thinking.
And it matters enormously in real estate.
Orange County real estate can involve significant financial stakes, sophisticated buyers and sellers, complex properties, competitive offers, appraisal questions, financing challenges, inspections and highly specific client objectives.
Luxury transactions can introduce additional layers.
Not everything goes according to plan.
A lender changes course. An inspection uncovers something unexpected. A buyer gets nervous. An appraisal creates a gap. Two parties want different timelines. A contingency becomes an obstacle.
An experienced real estate advisor cannot guarantee that these things won't happen.
The value of experienced representation often becomes most visible in what happens next.
Does the agent simply report the problem?
Or does the agent start searching for solutions?
That distinction is central to George's closing philosophy—and to the approach Times Real Estate CA brings to representing its clients.
George's third principle was perhaps the most actionable:
"The battle is won before the appointment begins" was one of the central ideas behind his Side x Side session.
That doesn't mean an agent can decide what another person will do.
It means deciding what you will do.
Decide the objective.
Prepare accordingly.
Commit.
Establish accountability.
Then reverse engineer the actions necessary to move toward the result.
For an agent building a business, that might mean starting with an annual target and working backward to determine the number of transactions, appointments and meaningful conversations required to reach it.
For a difficult transaction, it could mean identifying every remaining obstacle between today and closing and addressing them systematically.
Hope is not a strategy.
Decision creates direction.
One of George's most important points was that closing isn't necessarily about having the perfect script.
It's about asking the right questions.
Questions uncover motivation.
Questions reveal objections.
Questions expose priorities.
Questions can uncover solutions that aren't visible when everyone is defending a position.
But George added another layer:
You need to ask those questions with the right belief behind them.
If you enter a conversation convinced there is no solution, your questions tend to confirm that assumption.
If you enter genuinely looking for a path forward, you begin listening differently.
For a seller, what appears to be entirely about price might actually be about timing or certainty.
For a buyer, what appears to be an inflexible contract demand might have a solvable concern underneath it.
Strong negotiation isn't about forcing someone to say yes.
It's about understanding what everyone is trying to accomplish well enough to determine whether a path to yes exists.
Ultimately, George's message at Side x Side went beyond closing techniques.
It was a framework for approaching difficult goals.
Who do you believe you are?
What narrative are you telling yourself about what's possible?
Have you actually committed to pursuing the outcome?
Then comes execution: setting targets, establishing accountability, reverse engineering goals, asking better questions, negotiating and remaining solution-oriented when circumstances become difficult.
Scripts can be learned.
Technology can be purchased.
Marketing strategies can be replicated.
But conviction has to come from somewhere deeper.
The takeaway George brought to Side x Side 2026 was that your goals may be closer than you think—but first, you have to believe they're possible and decide to pursue them.
Because closing isn't just a skill. It's a decision.
George C. Hanold V is Co-Founder of Times Real Estate CA, a boutique real estate company based in Newport Beach and serving buyers and sellers throughout Orange County.
Alongside Co-Founder and Broker Regan Beegle, George has built Times around personalized representation, sophisticated negotiation, creative problem-solving, local market expertise and the belief that clients should receive direct, high-level attention rather than feeling like another transaction within a mega-team.
Times Real Estate CA has been recognized among Orange County's top real estate professionals every year since 2017 and was voted #1 in Orange County by the Orange County Register in 2023 and 2025.
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