 Okay. You're really going to enjoy this interview with me and Joshua Smith. Let's just call it for what it is. This guy's an absolute animal. He's a beast. This guy does it all from fitness to business to life and everything in between. Today, he dives into the adjustments that his team has made in this new market through the shift. And it's interesting because, you know, it's kind of common sense. Okay. Who are our buyers and sellers in this new market? Let's adjust our scripts to accommodate for the people who are buying and selling in this market. And I love that. I love the pivot and I love the hustle. And I love everything this dude is about. He's just a grinder. He's just a hard worker. He's very focused. And I think you're really going to enjoy this interview. So without further ado, let's just dive right in there. Enjoy. But I look at this as there is no such thing as a good market or a bad market. The market's always good for somebody. It's real estate professionals. It's our job at the highest level to identify whom the market is good for. Okay. Let's start paying attention to transaction volume decline and look at where this is going. And then let's hedge our business accordingly. Okay. Well, how do we need a strategy shift? And this goes back to there's no such thing as a good market or a bad market. Market's always good for somebody. You know, we've got to pivot and shift with our overall strategy. What commission rate are you guys getting over there right now? Then I get really good at doing the same thing with investors, right? Being able to represent the investors, have great relationships, long-term relationships, you know, with as many investors as I possibly can big. Let's just say the overarching goal truly was to get the consumers to go out there and invest that money back in the economy, increase money velocity so businesses didn't scale. One of the issues that we're experiencing right now and why we're experiencing so much inflation is there's only three ways to grow cheaper. So you got population growth, you got productivity, and then you have debt. All right, bro. Long time no see. Yeah, yeah. We just got done jamming up for about 90 minutes. Nah, man. How you doing, man? Dude, doing epic, brother. Couldn't be better, man. Just enjoying life, enjoying this crazy market. You know, enjoying the fam, dude. It's amongst crazy times, that's for sure. Yeah. Now, I was telling you, we just did your show. I'll link that episode below in the description for everybody. When you get through watching this, guys, go back and watch that one. Joshua interviewed me. But Joshua here is, I mean, as I said in that interview, when I started coaching and trying to, you know, build my social and everything else, he was one of the very first people that I saw because there was this video that went viral. And it was him. I believe it was at a rematch. Did you have hair back then? Yeah. Yep. Brace your hair back then. This is my post-COVID haircut. Yeah. Your arms were small. You had hair. It was just like. That's when I was all suited up. You know what, when I actually saw you at some point later or on social, I think maybe I started seeing your Facebook ads, right, with the webinars and stuff. And I didn't put like two and two together for a minute because you looked so different from that video to you had a serious transformation and everything. But anyway, been in the business for a long time. You got into coaching and doing other things. True entrepreneur. You know, you got into the supplement business for a while. You still doing that? Yep. Yeah. It's not only going non-real estate business, but still have the supplement business. Everything else is kind of attached to the real estate ecosystem one way or another. Yeah. And then you had a, do you still run a team at all? Yep. Okay. And at one point you guys were selling like how many houses a day? You know, we averaged still to this day, man, about two a day. You know, I mean, one a day, I guess right now it's probably under two a day. You know, volumes weigh up with prices and commissions, but units are slightly down. So, you know, I think my best year overall was just over 700. Right. And then you're in Phoenix and we were just talking about that market. You're down from about 8,000 to 10,000 transactions a month to down to, what, 5,000, 6,000? Yeah, 55,000. Yeah, somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 hovers, yep. Yeah. Yeah. So just let's get into that for a second. Like how are you guys handling that drop in transactions? You know, what do you tell on the team? And you know, how are you, you know, adapting in this new market? Yeah. So, you know, something, I mean, you and I have been in this game a long time and I've learned that, okay, if you want to make good consistent income month over month, I mean, yeah, you got to have the right plan, but it really comes down to your habits. You know, consistent habits showing up each and every day doing the work consistently. Like if you don't want to experience that roller coaster, you know, if you want consistent income coming in, but then from there, if you want to make good consistent money year over year and continue to grow your business year over year, you also must have the ability to read the different markets, you know, and I know that this is a philosophy that you and I share, but I look at this as there is no such thing as a good market or a bad market. The market's always good for somebody is real estate professionals. It's our job at the highest level to identify whom the market is good for, pivot shift accordingly with our prospecting marketing, you know, focus energy, and there's opportunities on markets. Transactions are always taking place. So, you know, about two years ago, so going into 2022, when you knew that, okay, the Federal Reserve, it's like, dude, I don't want to sit there and act like I was able to predict every aspect of this because we never know the magnitude. It was like 2008. It was, you know, pretty easy for me to adapt into short sales and REOs because, you know, it's just, I breathe. What year did you get in the business again? Just for a while. Okay, 05. So you got in right when the market was starting to like teeter a little, like it was starting to level off. Yeah, we peaked May of 05. And then it was actually a good time to get in the business, bro. Yeah, you didn't like get spoiled with that big rush. You know, you kind of got in when things were starting to slow down. So you kind of had to like, that was actually probably a pretty good time to get in. Yeah, I mean, I asked 23-year-old college dropout. I had no idea. But to your point, you know, it was like I was used to pulling on a blank sheet of paper and having to reinvent myself every day anyways. You know, so, but okay, we peaked in May of 2005. Then it's a 31 month slow progression of month over month, slow, you know, but month over month, inventory climb, you know, it's supply and demand, man. And, you know, so when people kept telling me, oh, I didn't like nobody saw this coming in 08, I'm like, how did you not see it coming? Now with that, again, I'll be honest, I didn't know the magnitude it was going to happen. But we knew, you know, we knew it was transitioning from an extreme seller's market to a buyer's market to more of an extreme buyer's market. So then same thing, you know, right? Okay, when you have the Federal Reserve buying $90 billion a month of mortgage backed securities and they announced to the world that, okay, we're going to stop, you know, we're going to stop that process. And then we're going to start a quantitative tightening process. It was like, okay, anytime cost of capital goes up, economic activity slows. You know, so now the benefit that we had, you know, is, so again, this was all announced to us, you know, so then from there, it's like, okay, we're going to go out of this, you know, zero interest policy, we're going to go out of this free or low cost capital environment and go to a much more, you know, expensive capital, you know, environment. So, and with prices being at where they were, it was like, okay, you know, like we knew that this was going to lead to some type of a slowdown. Again, I'm not saying I knew the magnitude of that, but, you know, we started prepping for this right away as far as watching for it. So, you know, about two years ago, we started prepping for this and really, you know, kind of phase one was, okay, as we started seeing interest rates going up, because we had about from January to about June of 2022, they're going up about half a percent a month. You know, so then it was okay, well, how we prepping our buyer clients, our buyer clients who are under new builds prepped them for that situation. You know, but then as we started seeing the transaction volume decline, you know, really start to taper or come down, there was really two things that we overall did. You know, I mean, well, I should say three, number one, we already talked about is operating from that mindset mental perspective of, you know, it's always good for somebody. So for me, like, I don't like, I don't really care what the market's doing, because it's doesn't mean that I don't care about what the market's doing. Like for me, from an ideology standpoint, I hope that this thing crashes massively. I hope prices come down 50, 60%. I hope this, you know, right? Because I want my dollar to be worth something. I want my kids to be a worthy American dream. I don't like this, you know, socialization of our country that we're seeing. I don't like, you know, but my opinion is irrelevant. You know, as far as what I want to happen, what's going to happen is going to happen. You know, so then from there it was, okay, let's start paying attention to transaction volume decline and look at where this is going. And then let's hedge our business accordingly. So we started tracking this month over month and looking at number of souls, but also pendings and how the pending stack to kind of a five-year standing average, you know, so we could sit there and adjust, you know, so at the peak of this, I mean, our business was down about 39%, meaning transaction volume, you know, decline. We're still about 30% right now today. So, you know, but with that, then it was, okay, number one is hedge for that. So what I mean by hedging for this is, okay, take out our business plans. If you have 39% lesser people in your marketplace willing or able to transact in real estate, you know, that then tells me, okay, I got to lead, generate and lead fault 39% more, you know, so whatever, if I was converting, I don't know, one out of 10, now I got to convert one out of 14. If I was converting one out of 100, now it's going to be one out of 140, you know, in prepping, you know, all my teammates that look in business, there's times of peace and times of war, right? We just came out of a decade plus time of peace, you know, now it's a time of war, you know, right? So I'm telling my agents and I've been preaching this message about two years now of like, look, dude, you want balance, you like, I get wanting all of that, but now isn't the time to seek that. Now is the time to go out there and during war periods, man, you freaking fight and you don't stop fighting until that war is done, you know, because this is going to position all of us that choose to stay in the game to be light years ahead of everybody. This is a chance to go out there and snag massive market share. So number one was hedging for four transaction volume. Then from there was a shift in strategy, you know, so like an example, I mean, we had one of our big for a lot of years now represent a lot of big institutional investors. So one of our big investors, Blackstone was buying about 20 properties a month from us. You represent Blackstone? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, cost of capital is going up and up. They're just like, hey, dude, all the smart money's out. You know, they're just like, we're done buying until we can figure this thing out and see how this shakes out. Like, do they stop buying there in Phoenix? Yeah, well, they're still buying, but dude, it is so hard to push a deal through with them because it's like, look, with their carrying costs, the cost of capital, dude, same offer that they're offering 50, 60, some 80 grand less than they would have, you know, that same property, you know, they're really low balling right now. Yeah. Yeah. So it's very difficult to get those deals together. So, you know, okay, well, I can't have a 200 plus deal your deficit inside my business. So then looking, okay, well, how do we need a strategy shift? And this goes back to there's no such thing as a good market or a bad market. Market's always good for somebody. You know, we've got to pivot and shift with our overall strategy. And really looking out, okay, this is no longer a market of those that want, this is a market of those that need. So who needs to buy? Who needs to sell? You know, who's got the massive motivation, almost that desperation, you know, and pivoting accordingly. So, you know, we went from doing, you know, I mean, when we're still doing some of these things today, but you know, representing more of the investors on the buy side, which investor purchases in my market is down 67%. You know, individual investors. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty much all you have buying right now is just individual investors, all your big money's out, dude, right? You know, and I don't blame them. You know, a lot of people think that, okay, Blackstone's paying cash or Blackrock's paying cash. No, dude, they're maybe putting 20, 30% down and then they have, you know, lying with the Fed. And, you know, and it's a floating interest rate, right? So, you know, this is crushing their cap rates. And, you know, you know, but then you can start to see, okay, what are they doing? What's Blackrock doing? I mean, they're just raising billions right now, dude, for more residential funds, just sitting on the sidelines, waiting for that timing to be right again. You know, so, yeah, then we just had to pivot with the strategy shift. You know, so, you know, right now we're really focused on going after sellers, you know, and with our sellers, you know, going after fizzbows. I mean, the traditional fizzbows and expires, these are people that have their hands up, hands raised. But what I'm always looking for even more so is where is there that need or again, that desperation, but where there's not a lot of other agent saturation. So fizzbows and expires, a lot more saturation. Now, with the right strategy, you can get beyond that. You know, but like right now, we'll really focus is going after investors on the list side, you know, because within our market, you've got long-term buy and holds. So we're down 6% on rents. So rents are coming down. We're experiencing cap rate compressions for the first time in about 15 years or so, you know, so you got rents down about 6% year over year in our market. So somebody was at a 10% cap rate, you know, a year or 18 months ago, you know, that's not just a 4% cap rate that they're at now because now you got increased taxes, you got increased insurance, all this stuff is going up with inflation. It's not just going up. It's not still going up slower. You're saying it's negative year over year. Yeah, negative. Yep. Yep. You know, so going after long-term buy and holds and targeting those investors that people who like they're getting less rent, their expenses went up and y'all are basically saying, hey, you know, you want to get out of this thing. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Right. And this is going to be like, look, somebody that bought right, bought smart. I know you and I were just having a conversation of, you know, those couple of properties you bought for like a hundred grand, you know, okay, like you got people that bought right, you know, back in the day, like they're fine. You know, right? These are really the people that, you know, bought in this last few year, you know, fad craziness. They had FOMO kicking in and they just, you know, they, I mean, we had a lot of people buying at like three, four percent cap rates. In Phoenix. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So going after those and then going after STRs. So single fame, you know, so you're a short-term rental market. Okay. I mean, you got domestic travel right now dropping off of the cliff nationwide. And then if you look at like Airbnb as an example, I mean, you got about 60% of those that occupy these being millennials. Well, who's getting hit the hardest in this crazy, you know, inflationary era that we're in, it's millennia, right? So, so our market is typically between 70 and 75% occupancy rates for short-term vacation rentals. Now we're down to 52%, you know, and over 50% of these STRs nationwide were, you know, purchased post COVID. So it became again, this big fad thing with everything going on. And, you know, you know, so, you know, really targeting those. Now, the cool thing that I like about this is it's a win-win. So whether I'm reaching out to an LTR and STR, you know, and we're converting at 8% right now. So 100 conversations, eight listings, right? But here's the cool thing is you can flip those other 92% of the buy side. So, you know, if I'm reaching out to them, you know, hey, whatever their name is, Joshua Smith here, I'm a local real estate professional in Glendale, Arizona. I know to see you have an investment property at 123 West Main Street. I know your time is valuable. I promise I'll be quick. The reason for me reaching out today is a lot of our investor clients are choosing to list and unload portions of their real estate portfolio due to the current economy and due to the local real estate market. And just seeing if that is something that you are currently considering. If so, be more than happy to send over the numbers to you, then we could set up a time to further discuss. And then we just shut up, right? You know, because here's the thing is a lot of people see all these institutional investors. I think that all, so many institutional investors bought all these properties and they did buy a lot. But dude, it only represents about 5% of all the single family tax rental properties. And that's in Phoenix. That's, I mean, it's even lower than that when you look at the whole country. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, so most of these are just regular people like you and I, you know, regular people that, you know, just have this to add to their, you know, overall retirement portfolio. And they don't necessarily know what's going on. You know, let's just say they had a tenant in there and have had a tenant in their last 18 months. They don't know that the market is down yet until they replace that tenant. You know, so sort of looking at this, okay, like if anybody, you know, didn't buy with an extremely healthy cap rate on either one of these, you know, if they're looking to sell at or close to peak pricing before their cash flow gets too far in the negative, like now's probably the time to do it. Now, those that say, because the vast majority are like, hey, no properties perform a great no interest in selling now or anytime in the future, you know, right, then we can flip that in the buy side. Hey, that's so great to hear, you know, again, a lot of investors I'm talking to aren't in your situation. So I'm really glad to hear this properties perform a great for you. Hey, before I let you go just out of curiosity, if I could find other deals that perform as good, if not better than this property, you know, would you have interest of adding additional real estate investments to your portfolio? And if so, would it be okay with you if I email over any deals that we find, right? Any halfway decent, savvy, sophisticated investor says yes to that. So, you know, we're, you know, combining those two there. And look, the reality is, there's not a lot of great deals in our market, at least at this time, you know, but playing the long game because look, this, I mean, how many markets have you and I seen do that? It's always shifting. There's going to come a time where that equation is right again for investors, you know, um, you know, and then, you know, we're seeing a big uptick in NODs again, notice the defaults, you know, so right now we've got about 2.8 million or sorry, 2.8% of all mortgages throughout the U.S. about 84 million mortgages, you know, on about 12 million helots. So when you do the math of that, I mean, it's close to about 3 million, you know, people that are 30 plus days default behind in their payments right now. And there's a lot of them, you know, about half of them that can go out there and sell and they got the equity to sell. And then, you know, we've got the other half that maybe bought since 2021 that are in short sell position. But what I like about those niches is they're people that have a need to go out there and transact and move, but they're not heavily saturated, you know, with other agents going after them. And then, you know, on the buy side, man, we're really targeting like looking out again, who's buying. So we're really targeting Gen Xers, even though I know that this kind of classifies millennial slash Gen X for that 40 to 55 year old age cohort, married couples with families because they're peak income earning years that have been in their properties 10 plus years. So they got plenty of equity to, you know, when they sell that property for down payments for rate buy downs, but then really looking, okay, like who's relocating to our market here in Phoenix? So then we've got a lot of people from California moving out here, right? So then from there, okay, what are the metros within, you know, California people are moving here. So San Francisco Bay Area is a big one for us. You know, right? Okay, somebody in San Francisco, you know, or Bay Area is selling 100 year house, 13 undersquare feet, three bed, two bath for maybe 1.4 million, right? They're coming out here buying, you know, 2500 plus square foot, four plus bedroom, tripped out, fully moving property for, you know, the 700 grand, you know, to them we're getting a steal, you know, right? So just making sure that we're being extremely laser targeted with strategies and, you know, just whether it be prospecting or marketing, but who can actually partake in this given market? Who has that need? Yeah, yeah, that's what I've been talking a lot about, you know, the people that need to, need to buy and sell, you know, that's what you need to be focused on. So these, these buyers coming from San Francisco, how do you, how do you target, do you have a, how are you, what's the strategy to capture those coming in? Are you doing Google? Yeah, it's your favorite stuff, dude. It's paid online marketing. Do you do a little, like, pay-per-click? Yeah, totally get a Facebook ads, dude. We're fine to be the best, man. You know, we still do, you know, we, I mean, we still do Zillow, you know, the issue with Zillow, I mean, Zillow is very, like, dude, very effective right now, right, for us. Because why do you think, like, the buyers that are actually coming through are serious right now? Anybody incurring or serious or what? Yeah, it's kind of, kind of like an open house too, right, where it's like, okay, like those that are completely checked out of this market, like they're not wasting their time. They're not even, they're not even looking. Yeah, yeah. So they're scrolling through, but they aren't clicking on anything. Yeah, because like with the Zillow lead, I mean, Zillow has really replaced the modern day sign call, right? And when I say Zillow, you can throw realtor.com or true, you know, any of those in this bucket, but okay, you know, I call intent based online marketing, right? They're going there with, I can't make those Zillow, they're going there with intention, right? And then when they're reaching out, they're inquiring about a very specific property, you know? So, but then, you know, with those, and this is where with each lead source, to have high conversions, you've really got to understand timeline and psychology per source. You know, like a fizzbo is different than an expired, you know, Zillow lead is vastly different than a Facebook lead, you know, like nobody goes on to Facebook to look at real estate. They're going on there to check out friends, family be entertained and somehow just eight and switch them to opt in then, right? And then, okay, I know that the average Facebook lead is inside my CRM for 6.7 months before they become a client. So about nine months before, you know, before they're going to be a closing where, okay, so if I speak to a Facebook lead, the same way that I speak to a Zillow lead, I'm going to spook the hell out. Like the Facebook game is, you know, very top of the funnel, you know, these are people, okay, I have to develop a relationship and a connection over the next six, seven, eight, nine months. So once they're ready to take action, boom, they're thinking of me, they're answering my messages, they're answering my calls, you know, so how we handle those is very delicate, like they're all going to tell you, oh, we're just browsing, you know, so it's just, hey, I know that you're just browsing, you know, not looking to make a move now or anytime in the near future. So just hypothetically speaking, if you were to make a move at some point in the future, what's your best guesstimate of what that, when that might be, you know, it's six months, 12 months, you know, right? So we're handling those very, you know, we're with a Zillow within the first 30 seconds, dude, we're setting an appointment, you know, but it's a different, so you got to understand that. So, but then from there, yeah, so I mean, because Facebook, the great thing about Facebook is you can get extremely targeted, you know, as far as area plus pony and up, like you got to make sure, you know, because sales is all about pain and pleasure. So you want to show the pleasure of, of, of, you know, where people want to be to the people in the pain, right? So it's like, what do we know that they want? So in our marketplace, we know the cities, we know the suburbs, you know, okay, again, like I said earlier, you know, 2400 plus square feet, four plus bedroom, two and a half plus bath, you know, swimming pool, they don't want any deferred maintenance in this market, like they want something that's fully moving ready, they don't want to screw with it. So a pretty tricked out property, you know, in that 600 to maybe million, you know, 600 to 900,000 price points were that sweet spot for us right now in our market, you know, to making sure that we're showcasing, you know, the imagery has got to be right, the copies got to be right, you know, in the conversions, you know, can be, can be fantastic, you know, if, but that becomes, yeah, you got to know the ads, but then it really comes down to the follow-up game, you know. Have the, have the calls to those Facebook leads went up, like over the last 12 months or since the market shipped it, or had they gotten cheaper? Yeah, no, it's, it's for sure gone up. And it's not necessarily because Facebook ads are getting more expensive, it's because, dude, like right now, I mean, you've got about 40% of the average consumer. People just aren't clicking all those links. Yeah, I mean, we are on the most, we're now in the, what, the most expensive or unaffordable real estate market to, to exist or, you know, very close to it. But let's just call it the most unaffordable real estate market to exist in the industry. Yeah, you also have the most unaffordable time to be alive as a U.S. citizen just to afford life. You know, we've got about 40% of the consumer that's just wiped out of, of this marketplace right now, right? You know, so then from there, okay, like, you know, because it's all about price point, right? So if you have lesser people that, I mean, the same house, like these houses, I'm selling for 700 grand right now, I'm sure it's the same in your market, you know, from back in the day, but shit in 2014, 15, we were getting those same houses for 300 grand. Which is crazy to think about. Yeah, it's gnarly, dude. So, yeah, a lot more people could afford it, you know, right? So, so now it's a smaller percentage, but it becomes relative, you know, because I never really pay attention. This might sound bad. Of course, I pay attention to cost per leave, but that's not my main focus. My main focus is my cost per acquisition, you know, and what my overall ROI is, you know, I mean, so right now, I mean, we're still, you know, roughly 500 bucks per cost per acquisition, you know, but commissions continue to go up and up and up. It's one thing I love about real estate. Yeah, we're experiencing almost inflation, but shit, it's all hedged because we're commission based, you know, right? Speaking of that, like in Phoenix is kind of the hub of all these tech companies and, you know, the discount brokers and stuff like that. Has that affected you? Like what commission rate are you guys getting over there right now? Yeah, dude, it's, you know, between two and three percent, like, and that's not the total. That's, you know, if you represent a buyer between two and three. So is it split between 50? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, so we're talking between four and six. Four is gross and then that's split and it just depends, you know. But again, and that's really the same for, you know, most markets, you know, just depends. I mean, it's like, look, dude, like we do full service plus we charge a transaction fee in addition to the commission, you know, so it comes down to your skill set and services that you provide and how well you can present and everything's negotiable. Yeah, it sounds like you're just really in tune with the market and thinking about, okay, where are the biggest opportunities? So investors, people that are, you know, have a lesson ROI on their properties they bought in the last year and a half, short term, short term rental properties. People come from Samsung. Like, you really, it sounds like you're really dialed in on, you know, targeting exactly where like, I'm a little more broad, you know, I'm like, okay, expired and for sub owners and, you know, this, that and the other, you're more like, okay, let me call this exact owner because, you know, they bought their property in the last three years. They're probably thinking about selling. If their rents went down 6% year over year, this could be a good possibility. And if not, if they're in great shape, then they're probably going to buy something. Yeah, you know, we're not going that grain either with it. I mean, we're getting the list, the absentee owner list and we're, but like, I'm not going in and, you know, going like this and to remind and saying, okay, how long did they own this property? What's that? You know, like, you know, because, because with that, like I said with this, I'm playing this of, of that relationship game, you know, because I just discovered a long time ago. Like, if okay, if I get really good at my ability to generate and connect with and develop relationships with traditional buyers and sellers, then I get really good at doing the same thing with investors, right? Being able to, to represent the investors, have great relationships, long-term relationships, you know, with, with as many investors as I possibly can, big, you know, everybody from, you know, your, your, you know, we've got investor clients that just look to, you know, acquire maybe six units a year, you know, or go out, whether it's flipping or most of my clients are buying hold, don't deal with a lot of flippers, but, you know, all the way through institutional investors that would buy 500 units a year, if we could feed them that, that, you know, volume. Then from there, it's like, okay, then if I get really good at having the ability to be able to go out there and service distress seller, you know, people in a distress market and have those relationships, because at any given time, one of those is going to be stronger, one is going to be weaker, you know, and we've got to be able to just, you know, expand and contract based on that, you know, so then from there, it's like, okay, you know, like, I'm just developing those, you know, playing the long game with it. So yeah, I mean, so yeah, I mean, when I'm calling these investors, like, dude, I don't care if they own the property 20, like, I'm just 20 years, I'm calling them all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't get the listing right now. Then bam, we're developing that relationship for the buy side. So, because we'll see, we don't know how this market's going to go, man. I mean, you know, you're probably a little bit more bullish than I am, you know, on the overall market. Now, I'm not, I don't live in the whole like bear versus bull. Again, to me, it's going to be what it's going to be. I have no idea. I don't have a crystal ball. But I believe that we are looking more like 1929 than we did, you know, 2007 right now. I think that we're already amongst the depression, you know, it's just not getting classified that yet, you know, with the quality. I mean, if you just look at, you know, true unemployment rate, when we look at, you know, debt, incline year over year on all, I mean, whether it be consumer government, corporate debt, you know, I think that the average person, well, again, whether it be corporations, I mean, we got seven companies that are, you know, carrying the whole, you know, so I just, I think that the condition that the average person, corporation, and global governments are in is a lot worse than people probably realize or know. Now, how does this play out? I don't know, dude. Like I just was reading the other day that freaking BlackRock is trying to come out with a new product, or maybe they've already come out with it, where essentially as a homeowner, like if you're struggling, you can sell them equity shares inside your home, they'll buy out equity shares, you know, you know, so then it's like, okay, like, can that be a new bailout product for people that become distressed in their properties? It's like, it's scary, right? Like your partners of BlackRock now? Yeah, yeah, you know, it's, there's a lot of crazy moves, but you know, here's the thing, I mean, there's been what 500 fiat currencies prior to the US dollar, you know, and they've all ended up suffering the same fate, you know, the powers that be can control the printing press, you know, and then as they're trying to maintain control over it, there's more authoritarianism that moves in. So we'll see where this goes, you know, because I get sent to, you know, I mean, we went from Keynesian economics for as far as monetary policy to FMC, looks like now they're, they're, you know, planning on fully, you know, switching, at least from what I can tell, and to MMT, you know, so we'll see what's that you need digital you mean? Is that what you mean? Well, well, MMT, modern monetary theory essentially means that, that balance sheets don't matter. You know, everything is classified as an investment in the future, but as long as the theory behind it is as long as they can control inflation. And that's where, you know, CBDCs really come in because if they can, now, and there's, you know, I get there, there's very valid reasons as to why people are concerned about it. I'm not a fan of them either, you know, but then let's just, let's just remove the whole programmable cancel culture, you know, thing out of it, you know, but with that digital currency, when they can predict live time people spending habits, you know, or then you just look at like COVID, dude, right? Like with all the stimulus is on the bailouts, you know, that took place there. Okay, well, you know, the, let's just say the overarching goal truly was to get the consumers to go out there and invest that money back in the economy, increase money velocity, so businesses didn't scale or I mean, didn't, didn't fold, fold, you know, you know, well, then from there, dude, okay, well, what people do, they hoarded like half of 50% of that money, you know, savings rate went from what, like 9.5% to 33% during that time. Okay, well, they could program it where it's like, okay, you have to spend that in the economy by this date, because this is money that we're, you know, giving you now, I know it's Robin, Peter, Paypal. So, you know, it was let's just don't know, you know, I know that we're paying for it in other ways, you know, with inflation and taxes and, but then from there, you know, again, that's the whole theory around it of, you know, with it being programmable that magnitude, plus if they, if they have live time behaviors and can see on these KPIs of how people are spending their money, where they're spending their money, so they make predictions, you know, ahead of times. Now, dude, it's like, to me, I think it's going to be a massive shit show, massive mistake, but we'll see, right? There's a lot of stuff brewing out there. Yeah, yeah, man. I mean, you got de-globalization taking place for the first time, you know, in our lifetimes, first time really, since the collapse of Roman Empire, you know, where it's like, okay, like globalization took place, World War II ends, right, Bretton Woods takes place, the agreement becomes, okay, well, we're going to be the World Reserve currency, and at the same time, we will become the global Navy, the global police, so everybody for the first time can partake in free and, you know, close to free and safe trade, so we can all get rich together, you know, but the deal was, is everybody had to ally with us against the Soviet Union to collapse Soviet Union, because the threat that, you know, the powers that be at least, deemed the Soviet Union to be at that time. Well, that's been done for what, 30 years, you know, in, you know, COVID, it seemed like kind of fast forwarded this de-globalization, but now it's just, okay, all that's over, man, you know, so now, no longer, what does this look like as we decouple from China? What does this look like, you know, who knows? And then when you look at global demography, dude, the human beings actually qualify now for the endangered species list. Yeah, yeah, I mean, even replacement rates in the United States, even though we have the healthiest demography of any advanced First World country, you know, our demography is pretty fucked up, dude, right, like a healthy demography should be a pyramid, where you've got, you know, younger generations and it's getting older. Well, most of the world is an inverted pyramid. Like you look at China, you know, there's double the amount of 15-year-olds as there is five-year-olds, there's more 85-year-olds and it's actually the fastest aging civilization record in history. And that pretty much is most of the globe right now, right? So you look at, okay, replacement rate for just here in the United States is 2.16 kids per couple, right? As Americans, we're having 1.66 kids per couple, you know, and this is maybe, you know, some of the people have theories of, okay, why, you know, the border's more open, we're becoming more pro-immigration, because for a lot of years, we weren't, who knows? I don't, I'm not in the rooms, dude, you know, so, you know, I don't know with this, but again, so all of, but like, when you look at all of those things, okay, when we don't have free, cheap, insanely cheap labor, you know, from China, from whatever, I mean, we actually are now for the first time ever, well, for the first time since global is, you know, I don't know how many years, but we are importing now more from Mexico than we are China. So as, I mean, the positive upside of this is long-term, we're gonna have to bring back a lot of our manufacturing here. So, so predictions are is that we're gonna have to double our manufacturing footprint here in the United States within the next 10 years. Yeah, yeah, I mean, so that's, you know, you look at like, let's just say Houston is an example man with, you know, all the oil and then all the petrochemicals and being able to have the whole supply chain, you know, of oil, but then petrochemical products, you know, all within there, I mean, you know, there's gonna be a lot of good that comes from this, and it's gonna be very expensive to go out there and do it's probably gonna be highly inflationary to go out there and do it, you know, um, um, you know, but that might make it where, you know, iPhones are no longer a thousand bucks. Now, you know, like, who knows where all this is gonna go, but this is when, you know, people ask me, you know, like, dude, like, how's this gonna go? I'm like, yeah, I don't know. Show me an area of time where all these things were taking place at the same time. Um, I can't find any evidence of that. So I have no idea how this is gonna play out. So there's no time in history that all this kind of stuff is happening. Yeah, I mean, not in all the ways that it is. I mean, like, if you look at these, okay, we've had de-globalization take place back when the Roman Empire collapsed, you know, um, but it was a different era, different time, you know, um, um, you know, with that. So yeah, I don't know how in, you know, and then it's like, okay, advent of AI, you know, um, in robotics. It's like, okay, one of the issues that we're experiencing right now and why we're experiencing so much inflation is there's only three ways to grow GDP. So you got population growth, you got productivity, and then you have debt, right? Okay, population growth is, you know, just out of the window for the most part. Productivity, well, we have the lowest productivity per worker in U.S. recorded history, and that kind of exists, you know, in most places throughout the planet. So, okay, that's out of the window. Now, with robotics and AI, how is that going to increase productivity? Like it's probably going to make a massive net positive benefit, but who knows how many decades that will take to actually go out there and do that. You know, so then it's like the only way we're growing GDP right now with this, you know, kind of artificial economy we have is through debt. You know, and this is where, again, you got the Fed, you know, Fed Reserve 10x in their balance sheet since 2007, you've got, you know, the Treasury Department 3x in their balance sheets to do. I mean, we're running a $2 trillion a yearly, you know, deficit. So again, all this stuff is just highly inflationary. I can imagine you sitting around at your house just losing your mind. No, I don't. I'm just very curious, you know, because to me, like, I don't operate from a place of fear, you know, it's like, why worry about something that we can't control? You know, a lot of this dude is just interesting to me. I can't say that. Some of this stuff, I don't know if it even helps me in my business. Right, right, right, right. We were just talking to my podcast with you and you're like, dude, before, when I was, you know, highly produced, I didn't even know what interest rates were. You know, it's like, how much of this knowledge really like helps you in your business? I don't know. I just, it's just a hobby of mine, you know, to go after, in, you know, my history buff and I just enjoyed learning it and studying it. And I don't allow myself to operate from a place of fear. There's going to be massive opportunities regardless of what happens and, you know, life's going to be good regardless, right? Success is internal, not external. The wonders are going to go in, no matter what. And, you know, the people that sit on the sideline and, you know, cry and complain about everything, they're going to continue to cry and complain about everything. Taking it back to your, to your business, you said you, you represented Blackstone on, was it Blackstone? Yep. Yep. At the peak, how many houses did you sell them in a year? We were about 20 a month was our run rate. It's about 240. Under itself? Yeah. And how did you, how did you create that relationship? So the first time around was, so, and this kind of goes back to reading markets, right? So it was the first time I started working with, now, this was when they still owned invitation homes, right? Like, so this was back, what, 2011, let's just say, you know, I'm starting to see Oreo kind of come down, starting to see short sales still come down. Traditional business wasn't really picking up yet. So I'm just trying to seek, you know, looking at closing numbers, meet with title company reps, like, like, where's the next opportunity? Like, people are buying and selling, where's that at? So then we started seeing for the first time, at least for me in my career, hedge funds come in and jump into the single family attached game. Prior to that, they're all, you know, multi units and whatnot. You know, so I hear this big company out here, Invitation Homes, that has aspirations of buying at least 500 a month. So then I'm like, you know, Invitation Homes was just a fund of Blackstone before they sold it, right? So I was able to develop, I'll get a contact of an underwriter there, just because they were submitting some of the, you know, offers on my properties, right? Because I had a lot of short sales, a lot of Oreos, and this is a good story to do, right? Because this is just shows, hey, look, man, like, you're going to get nos, you got to figure workarounds, right? So with this, so I ended up getting this contact reaching out to them, and I'm like, hey, dude, like, you know, how do I get in and start helping you guys go out? You want to acquire 500 properties? I got a small army with my team here will help you go out there and acquire these, like, you know, how do I get in with you? And I'm just getting told you can't, you can't, you can't. Then I'm like, well, dude, like, you guys keep reaching out to me to try to buy my properties. Like, what do you mean? I can't, you know, I mean, this is going on for months, dude. Yeah, right. So finally, I developed a relationship with the underwriter somewhat. And, you know, I get told that so essentially the local fund was started by, you know, somebody that was Mormon. And I guess in that church, like they pretty much are a tight knit group that essentially I was told because I'm not Mormon, you know, I couldn't get in as a direct agent buyer for them, you know, for those properties. So then from there, I'm like, all right, dude, there's got to be workarounds, right? So I get that, okay, like, fine, I'll respect that, you know, there's got to be workarounds. So then he comes to me and is like, all right, dude, like, as long as you are shooting us deals that are not in the market, once they get on the market, they have the offers have to be written and represented through our in-house buyer team. You know, then from there, I'm like, okay, cool. Like, I'll just make sure I'm sending you all my properties before they hit the market so I can, you know, double dip on those, you know, so we're sort of having some success with those. So then though, I'm like, okay, they can be anybody else's listings, as long as they're not on the market, right? You know, like, yep, yep. So then I so I created a platform called 50% more commissions. So when I'm like, I got 60,000 agents in my market, dude, where let me just go out to all these other agents show, so, hey, send me your properties before they hit the market, I will get you a cash offer before your property hits the market. Now you got to remember at this time, they were buying homes, you know, I mean, the homes were already 50 cents on the dollar at this time. So they were paying full, you know, full price above price, because these homes were, you know, $100,000 homes that today would be $700, you know, whatever it would be, it wouldn't be $700, but you know what I'm saying here. So, so then from there, I'm like, okay, like you got these agents, let's just say they're listing these properties at 6%, but just give me one and a half percent, you can keep four and a half percent, because all I did do is I created a website where they would submit the listing photos, submit the property information, I just hit, I just became middleman, right, hit the agent's contact info. I just forwarded that to the underwriter, got a cash offer, forwarded it to them, they had their own inspection teams, you're like, I was doing deals within two minutes, but just bam, bam, bam, bam. You know, so we started scaling that up, well, that became too much volume, more volume than I could handle, my team could handle. So then I went out there to my other team leader buddies in the market and was just like, all right, let me teach you what I'm doing, but you pay me a 10% override, you know, on everything that you're doing, you know, in my first lesson with this though, with how big institutional investors work, dude, you know, and it was a hard lesson to learn, but then end of 2012, market starts to correct, they're like, okay, we're done. So I've got like 60 deals on our contract and they're like, okay, cancel every one of those, give the earnest money to the seller, we're done. You have a deal fall out of contract, it can be a hard hit, but you have that many fall out in a day. So then it was learning with vulnerability. So then over the years, I've just developed relationships with them now, this last time around, and this became a huge solution for us in 2021 through home partners of America. So what they were doing there is, well, you know the product. They do like a rent-to-own type deal? Yeah. I mean, dude, it's essentially a reverse buy and hold, right? So instead of going out there, finding the property, finding the tenant, they're like, okay, go out there and find us, find us the tenant first. Now, if the tenant qualifies, you know, we'll let them go out there and pick out the property as long as it meets our buy box, then we'll pay cash for the property. They move in now within three months after moving, that tenant can buy back the property, and they have the exclusive right to buy it back for five years at preset amounts. So since it goes up like 4% year over year. But it was, and they had about 25% of the tenants that would buy those back, but the vast majority, it was just you got a better quality tenant with higher buy-in for the overall property. So it was just kind of a reverse lease purchase, reverse kind of buy and hold. But what that did was even our traditional buyers that maybe needed closing costs or whatever, it allowed them to become cash buyers during, you know, when we were in a market where, you know, you're getting 20, 30, 40, sometimes 100 offers on every single property. So we leveraged it for a lot of different situations. Like look, dude, you need credit repair, and you're just not quite there yet, you know, you can go out there and buy the house. And dude, we had so many clients, man, that worked out amazing for that. They would buy it back in six months, 12 months, and they walked into 50, 60, 70 grand equity because the market was going so nuts. So we were able to leverage it for a lot of different reasons. Wild man, wild. So the Blackstone relationship started way back in the last crash, and then you just, it kind of morphed into what it was. That's insane, bro. Did you see the, did you see like yesterday or whatever, Remax settled that, they didn't settle it, they offered to settle that, the buyer commission lawsuit situation? Yeah, I didn't, I kind of live under a rock. Dude, like, I don't, I was going to see what you thought about the whole situation. But I heard about it today. One of my, one of my coaching clients reached out to me today about it to get some insight. Yeah, anywhere, you know, they, and I don't think any of it's been final lives. I think they've just offered to settle. But anywhere, you know, I think they put up like 55,000, 55 million or whatever, and they remixed for the same thing or whatever the case may be. But a lot of people have been worried about this. You know, the buyer agent commission, I know in Australia and UK, there's no buyer agents. Basically, there are buyer agents, but they operate kind of like lawyers, you know, they get a retainer up front, and then they work for the buyer, and they get paid by the buyer. But I've got an agent in Australia. He said that here lately, because the market's been slow, the market's slow there as well, he said that buyer agents have kind of started to become a thing there, number one. And number two, sometimes the buyer agent will kind of reach out to the listing agent. Most of the time, the listing agent represents both sides, and they get like, they list it for 3% and get both sides. That's the normal scenario. But he said here lately, with the slow as the market's been, some of the buyer agents come and like, he'll cut a deal with them and he'll give them some of the 3%. You know what I mean? And stuff like that. But what is your opinion on this situation with the buyer agent commission, and like what they're trying to do, and all that stuff? Yeah, I mean, my overall opinion, and again, I want to be careful with this, because my opinion is irrelevant. It's going to be what it's going to be. My opinion with it is all utter bullshit, right? When I look at this, it's okay, everything's negotiable, everything's disclosed. At least in my market, everything's disclosed. They know exactly on the listing agreement. What's funny to me, the seller sells a property, they agree to pay this agent this much money. The agent got the property sold, the seller paid that much money, closed on it, was happy with what they made. Years later, they come back and say, hey, you shouldn't have paid the buyer agent out of what I was going to pay you. That's not much like saying, I hired you to do my roof, you can't subcontract it to Purdue to come do it. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think it's ridiculous too. I think it's bullshit. And all these brokerages are paying 50 million bucks. Yeah, it is what it is. We'll see where it goes. In my almost 20 years now in the business, dude, it seems like every other year, there's some new. For sellbounder.com, Zillow, Amazon. Yeah, it's nothing new of all our commission structures going to be changed or how we're going to get paid is going to change. And look, this one might have more teeth than the other. But again, just kind of back to what we talked about earlier, dude, it's going to be what it's going to be. Like the advancement of technology and AI and how much pressure it seems like the public is putting on, you know, like, I guess they don't think agents do anything. The market kind of has spoken, right? I mean, I'm still getting five or six percent just like I did when I first started 22 years ago. But do you think that with AI, advancement, technology and all this stuff that there's a possibility we could get squeezed a little more? I mean, you said, you know, you guys are taking some at four. I think it could get squeezed anymore. Yeah, yeah, 100%. You know, if you look at this, and this was, dude, years ago. Now with this, like I'm not personally, you know, quote unquote, a discount agent, you know, like I would try to go out there and get what we're worth. And in their situations, I look at it, it's a business decision. Like, dude, if I'm going to go through a million dollar listing and I, they're only willing to pay 4% me now to take two and give two. Like to me, I look at that as, okay, how much money did it take me to get to the table? What's my hard marketing costs? All right, what's my ROI on this? Is this a smart business decision? Like I don't allow myself to get emotional with, oh, I'm worth this, you know, or whatever. It's just like, dude, it's dollars and cents. What's my ROI? And is that a good news to my time from a business tactical standpoint? You know, but years ago, you know, when we started seeing a lot of these discounters, you know, come out of the woodwork. Now, first off, you know, before the last crash, we saw a lot of discounters come out of the woodwork as well. And then, okay, things crashed, they all went away, they couldn't sustain, then, you know, that kind of went away for a little bit because, dude, when you have your average listing sitting on, and I know that this is an extreme, but let's just say, you know, back to the peak of the great financial crisis with listing inventory. I mean, at least in my market, dude, we built up to almost 15 months worth of inventory. You know, I mean, I've had homes that took two years to go out there and sell. You know, that was a short sell situation, but you know, it's like, okay, like that takes a different skill set. That takes a lot more money, a lot more energy, a lot more time, a lot more, you know, so we'll see again how this shakes out. But when you look at any other industry, also not too long ago, do my, you know, maybe a year ago or so, my wife goes and we need a new TV for, you know, our bedroom or whatever, so she goes out and buys this TV. Now, it's, you know, same size, you know, same style like LED, you know, the flat screen, whatever is the one in our living room, but our living room one, we don't watch a lot of TV. So, you know, our living room one is like one I bought, I don't know, 2010, 12, I don't know when it was, but right when that technology came out. And we spent like, I don't know, fucking eight grand on that TV. Once you just got for our bedroom, do way better, like you, I can talk to remote and shit, you know, it was like 800 bucks, far superior, 10th of the cost, you know. So, dude, like with technology, things typically get less expensive. And I look at this too, like, okay, when I first got in and you first got in this industry, dude, when before we like, we didn't have DocuSign, you know, we didn't have smartphones, like when I first got into like, we were, we're still faxing, like scanners weren't even lay a thing yet. Like my capacity of doing four deals, okay, I can easily do six, seven, eight in the same time it took me to do four, but commissions haven't changed, you know, you know, and again, I'm not arguing four or, or, you know, one way or the other, it's just going to be what it's going to be. But if you look at all the other things, yeah. So, so then years ago, I just sort of breaking this down. I'm like, okay, if I got to go out there and compete against, let's just say the red fence, you know, how do I go out there and run a, let's just say a 1997 flat fee commission and still go out there and net over a million dollars a year, you know, and then from there, dude, it's just comes a falling point. So, you know, I built out, you never deployed it, but I just say I'm a big hope for the best plan for the worst. So I already have it all created, you know, I just haven't deployed it, but, you know, automated funnels where essentially it's, you know, walks into the steps kind of like I started looking at like what open doors doing or as you deal, he was doing where, you know, just kind of copied that into when I say copy it, like meaning, okay, like they go watch this video next step, then is, you know, for them to upload, I give them instructions of how to take the photos with their phone, you know, so I get all the property information and bam, we shoot them out of CMA, you know, and then I can have kind of an intern, you know, at least my model is going to be an intern CNA CMA team for new agents that are coming out where they get a small little blip, but they're also getting skill set, you know, and knowledge there. But then, okay, then once that CMA is done, they either agree or counter, then from there it documents out the paperwork, you know, so like we can still go out there and give every element as high as, as far as marketing, as far as contract negotiation, if I just find out and figure out how to save my time, so if I can get it down to okay, I've got maybe, you know, an hour to 90 minutes, you know, into each property listing, but I'm making two grand per, and I can do, you know, a big volume with that. Well, then dude, like it's all possible, it's all scalable. Now, are a lot of agents going to be able to adapt to that? No, because a lot of agents hate change, and, you know, but just because of the volume play, dude, like, okay, like lower prices isn't necessarily a bad thing, if you can scale up, it's like, who makes more money, fucking Walmart or Whole Foods? Guess some Walmart. What is your team look like, bro? Like all your companies, like you got to have like all kind of like how many people report to you, like all your different companies, like how, like how many people, like how many employees do you have, how many agents, like, what is your organization? Like, yeah, dude, it's, man. Yeah, it's pretty big now. I mean, with all the different companies, it's, you know, I mean, over over 100 direct employees, and then, you know, outsourced, and that's not counting independent contractors. I mean, at this point, now we're thousands of agents, you know, my team, my direct team in Phoenix, you know, because I've got the, you know, the brokerage side, and then we've got, you know, the team side. So about 50 agents, you know, on the team right now. And that's dude, it's, it's, we've gotten lean with that too, right? I mean, two, two transaction coordinators, like we've had to get the transaction volume coming down, you know, I've learned a long time ago due to I've had too many positions in the past where there was some type of an economic contraction. I hold on to my people and float them and dip into savings and go broke, but then eventually, you know, when you eventually have to let them go because you're out of money, like not one of them has ever reached back out to me and be like, Hey, how are you and your family? Yeah, yeah, thanks for doing that. So now it's just like, you know, I lead with revenue in the business, dude, it's like, okay, is there money to pay you or if there isn't, unfortunately, layoffs need to happen, you know, and, and, you know, I've only had, this is actually the second cycle ever in my business where I've ever had to go through any layoffs, but do them when, you know, you're doing 70 units a month and you go down to 50, it's like, okay, we don't have a need for that extra transaction coordinator, whatever it may be, you know, right? And my team is 50, you know, roughly 50, you know, full-time agents, well, there's some part time in there. But yeah, between all companies, just over 100, as far as direct reports for me, dude, I've, I mean, everybody has access to me, but right now I have, you know, four, four direct reports, dude. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack, man, with like, the story with the coaching and transitioning and those Facebook ads and the webinars and all the 90 day and now it's a year, a yearlong situation and all that stuff. But before we go, I wanted to, I wanted to just touch on, like, something I'm really impressed with, and that's this, franchising of your brokerage that you have going on. First-class realty, is it first-class realty? Yeah, first-class realty. You guys are on all 50 states. You said you have 200 locations. No, no, about 120. 120, 120 locations, right, that you guys are franchised out. It's basically 100% brokerage, but I'm just sitting here because I learned this for the first time today that you've taken it this far. I haven't been paying attention to first-class realty. Maybe you had your own brokerage in Phoenix, but man, like, just, I wanted to touch on that just for the people watching, like, if you're a new agent, if you're, you know, at 10, 20 million trying to get the 50 or 100 million trying to build your team, whatever, like, this man has started from the bottom, came through, you know, built a team, built the brokerage and now has franchised it out and has 120 locations. It's a very inspirational story, bro. Yeah, I appreciate that, dude. And look, it's, you know, success isn't, like, I heard Arnold say one time, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger, he's like, look, you know, yeah, you could technically say Arnold's self-made, you know, right? But he's like, dude, nobody's self-made. He's like, no, without mentors, without people. And, you know, like, this, you know, okay, like the franchising, like that wasn't, you know, me that started that company as a great friend of mine, you know, I did some consulting and, you know, help with them on the front end of it. And that relationship just kind of happened after the fact and, you know, it was just a great vehicle, you know, to be able to expand into, you know, one of the biggest mistakes that I made back in 2017 is I was like, okay, look, man, let me go out there and build a backend because I love backend operations. And I'm like, due to my real estate business and, you know, the coaching business, you know, and like in the real estate niche, I'm already, you know, I've already got to be kind of the name or the face or whatever, you know. So then out of that, I'm like, but I love backend operations. I'm like, for all my other business ventures, like I want to be the dude that nobody knows about, like I'll be behind the scene. So let me go develop a backend team where we have all the marketers, we have the, you know, web designers, the developers, we handle logistics, bookkeeping, you know, all of that. And then I'll go out there and develop strategic partnerships of people that are experts in their space. They know the product inside now, they're the experts, but they just aren't good with the backend stuff. And we'll just, you know, I'm like, all right, man, I'm going to get out, you know, a hundred of these and, you know, create a billion dollar plus portfolio doing this. And I built up to 13 of them, you know, and the thing I didn't account for, there's two things that I really were massive mistakes. Being different businesses that needed help with the backend, basically. Yeah, but I'll give you an example of one of them, dude, right? I'll give you two different examples of two different, you know, two different companies. All right, one of them was a nationwide optimal health physician consulting clinic. You know, so this is right when like testosterone placement therapy, hormone placement therapy was really becoming a thing, you know, but these doctors didn't know like what the hell they were doing. You know, well, my business partners, like they know that space inside now, they're, you know, like, they're the go-to experts for that. So then we create, okay, let's create a consulting firm where we're going nationwide and consulting all of these different physicians on how to go out there and do it, and then teaching them on the business side of like, here's how to read the blood work, here's how to upsell the blood work, and, you know, all of that stuff. And I mean, we built up, I mean, we built up a good business, dude, but, you know, having to go out there and manage and work with physicians and teaching them this stuff, you know, and really the hardest part that I had was managing the different relationships with each business partner at the same time, learning a completely new different avatar and putting all those pieces together. You know, so another one that I had, dude, was, so we, you know, expanded nationwide where we were, when I say nationwide, it wasn't like we're doing, you know, these all over the country, but we had the capability of doing it, but we were essentially flipping gym equipment. You know, so you get gym owners that go out of business, you know, or they're just selling that, but that equipment, like, what do they do with it, right? So, but most of our clientele were gyms that were going out of business. The last asset that they had was to sell the equipment. So we'd flip their membership base to a competitor and we might get like a 10% override on their ongoing EFT membership base. But then we would go out there and wholesale the equipment or refurbish it and go out there and flip it. And a lot of that was, because in Mexico, as their economy is growing, gyms are becoming a thing down there, you know, but they could buy from us, let's just say $80,000 of essentially brand new equipment to furnish a gym versus going to like life, you know, life fitness and spend 800 grand, you know, but again, just managing, you know, the logistics of all of it and the different avatar for each. And so what I learned from that, that, you know, because I ended up exiting from every single one of them, other than my supplement company, and then what lived in the same ecosystem for real estate was, man, at least for me, because I'm not Elon Musk, I don't know how he does it, right? But I guess there's only one Elon Musk, you know, so for me, it's like, okay, I got to do things that live in the same ecosystem that build off of each other, you know, so it's like, okay, I'm with my coaching company, you know, okay, what am I doing in my coaching company, dude, I'm just going through and giving everybody my entire operations manual, everything A to Z inside my business, showing them what to do, how to do it, give them all the resources, and they have support to me. So it's almost like an extension of my real estate business, you know, right? I'm already doing it's just in a different format, but I'm able to pull that off, what's, you know, affordable for them, you know, well, then from there, I started my software company because of the coaching company, because I had all these agents reaching out and saying, man, I want, you know, the systems used, but I can't afford $1,500 a month, you know, like, what's an effective, you know, all them one website, you know, transaction management slash, you know, CRM, you know, I couldn't find it out there. So I just went out there and built it and created it, you know, so, you know, $190 a month, you know, platform, at least for a single agent user, we're now 42% of my coaching clients and a buying our software, you know, so thousands of clients, I've never had to spend one cent of marketing, most people that were listening to the podcast probably haven't heard of it, but we've had a growth rate that has, you know, been like barely sustainable at certain times, where we're just hanging on as we're growing so fast without having to market, then, you know, about half of our franchise owners, maybe not half today, but, you know, a big percentage of our franchise owners, you know, are those coaching clients that, you know, I'm helping develop teams that then decide, hey, man, I want to go out there and, you know, open my own, you know, brokerage and build my own truly sellable product and, you know, component on there. So again, it's just all things living in the same ecosystem. And at least for me, that's what's important and how you can go out there and scale. It's interesting because it's like you figured out what you were good at, which was the back end, and then you continue to develop those skills, and then you had your back end ready to go help people, you know, that needed that were great on the front end that needed a back end. That's like me, right? I don't want the back end, but my thing is build a massive brand and then partner with companies just like you did, and I can bring them leads, right? I can partner with these companies. And so it's like everybody kind of finds their thing, you know, and then they can go out there and, you know, build their thing and then they can, you know, create streams of income and have different opportunities, you know, based on what their thing is, but they got to go be great at their thing, you know, and that thing, I think that's where most people kind of drop the ball is they want to do stuff. Yeah, you were talking about this in my podcast, you know, it's like, okay, people see where you're at today. Well, they don't see the 15 to 20 years of getting good at that thing before all this stuff came into fruition, you know, and same thing with me. I get, you know, because people are like, Oh, I want to have all these other businesses like you. I'm like, dude, I did one thing for for 10 years until I built that up to a point where I had an amazing team, where I was not able to just step out of production. I was able to step out of operations. So I was able to go from work in 60 or 80 hours a week to now essentially being bored. So now I could build the next thing, you know, and then I built, you know, then I, you know, so find out bored. What's that? You said being bored. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly what it was for me, dude. That's the whole reason I got into coaching and content creation is because I was bored being an agent. It's just like I'm here making a middle year dropped to zero every January first, you know, this is boring. It was fun building it, you know, but then when you get there, it's like, okay, what's next? Yeah. Yeah. And for me, it was, you know, when I say boring, like, look, at least I'm not everybody's different. Everybody has their different journeys to success. At least for me, I found that a huge important element to success is our ability to push you the board. You know, so, you know, for me, the boredom became in of like, look, I built, I built a business and the way I define a business is I can disappear and it's running and operating and without me, like I can disappear for a year or two years and that thing doesn't need me to go out there and run and operate. You know, you know, so, and that was my mission with my real estate business. And I did that took me 10 years to figure that out. You know, so now, though, and I'm a workhorse, dude, like some people love to just go chill. Like for me, dude, if I'm not working at least 60 hours a week, I don't know what the fuck to do with myself, dude, like I just, I'm at my most fulfilled when I'm building when I'm building shit. I love that I believe in with with an awesome team, right? And, you know, so then from there, it was like, again, went from working 60, 80 hours a week to now not working at all, then it was okay, what's that next project? You know, but for me, I'm always okay, what's the opportunity? You know, then from there, okay, let me I'm going to be involved long enough that it takes to okay, let's figure out, you know, the right winning strategy, then let's develop, you know, all the internal systems processes, build the right team, then get it where I can exit from day to day operations. And then I might go to the next thing. So I'm never trying to simultaneously build two or three things at once. Yeah, like we can't chase two rabbits, man. It's like, you know, I'm like, I didn't build a coaching company and trying to build my real estate team at the same time. It's like, you know, I mean, now I like when I walk into my team, I don't know 90% of my agent's names. You know, when I walk in the office, I don't know if it's an agent or a client, but I have people doing those things, you know, right, that have replaced me for those things. Hopefully now those agents hear this. Now, earlier, you're asking me about the social media, right? And so that's how I did it. I like really focused on Facebook for like months, didn't touch anything else. And then when I got to a place, I'm like, okay, kind of know how this works. Then I started messing around with Instagram. You know, when I stair stepped it, then I started doing YouTube and I started doing these other platforms and stuff, but it was like one at a time because people are like, you're posting everywhere, you know, how are you doing all that stuff? And it's like, well, I spent like six years and I did one at a time and spent months and months and months on each platform trying to really understand it and test, you know, and create content and stuff. But yeah, bro, it's been a pleasure, man, working, everybody finds you and all that good stuff. Yeah. So you can gsdmoded.com is my main website kind of hub. You can connect with the podcast from there, but anywhere on social, if you just, Josh with Smith gsdmode, it's pretty much my handle everywhere. So and I've got a lot of great content, like Ricky mentioned, he was just on my podcast before this. So we'll link these. So you guys can check that out. I think you've been on my show, what four times now? Four or five. Yeah. Yeah. A lot, a lot over the years. So a lot of free content always put out there just, you know, trying to emulate what Ricky's always doing. So Josh has some great content. Go to his channel, subscribe. He's always putting out great interviews and everything else. So, bro, we appreciate you. I'm looking forward to like watching the journey continue. Yeah, you as well, my friend. It's been an honor, dude, and love seeing everything you're doing, brother. I truly appreciate it.