 I think there's a couple of things really messing the industry up right now, one is paid coaching. This is what I believe. I'm sharing that with you for nothing. Just get out there and succeed. I'm incredibly excited about our next interview, Mr. Ricky Caruth. Your free real estate coach, the guy that's turning everybody from what is zeros into diamonds. I'm incredibly honored to have you on here, man. I'm pumped to listen to Ricky for the next few minutes. So as you guys know, I brought him on here. I've asked him one question. What's the one thing you would teach somebody to help them sell their next million dollars? So Ricky, the floor is yours, bro. Let's hear it. Absolutely, man. Thanks for having me on here. Super honor. Good to see you again. So I had an agent come down and shout at me from Jacksonville maybe, I don't know, maybe two months ago and it was right after he read the book, The One Thing. And after he shadowed me all day, he asked me what my one thing was. And I thought about it for a second and I was like, you know what, if I could only, if I only had one thing I could focus on to build my business to a million dollar year business, it would be to build the biggest personal brand through voice to voice and digital marketing with as many property owners in my area as humanly possible. So let me say that again to let it digest. Okay, it would be to build the largest personal brand through voice to voice, talking real conversation and digital marketing with as many property owners in my market as humanly possible, as many as I can do. Okay, so as a new agent, you know, people come into the business and they're worried about how do I fill out a contract and, you know, I need to get my business cards just right. What about my website? I need to get my web presence. I need to work on my social and they're doing all the things that do not, do not result in a direct sale. You know, I've got an agent in my coaching program, Quintavius Burdette in Mississippi. He's one year in the business. He's like one year and one month now in the business. He's closed 106 transactions. This guy made a half a million dollars in his first year, first year. You know, it took me 12 years to get to 100 deals a year as a single agent. This dude did it in one year, not only one year, but his very first year. And so it can absolutely be done. Well, how did he do that? You know, what did he do? Well, he started watching my videos right, you know, just as he was getting in the business. And I think it kind of lined him up with the right philosophies that he needed to know. And he laser focused on the one thing I'm talking about, talking to voice to voice as many property owners in his area as he can possibly humanly talk to. So he made it a goal to talk to 200 people per day. Like he used the dialer, he used Redx, Geoleds, find the numbers and call 200 dial 200 numbers every day. All right. And then he also made it a goal to meet 50 people at a grocery store every week. Like he just meets people and hands business cards out of grocery stores. So he just did those two things. That's it. And he sold 106 properties in his first year. So like it's a testament that it can be done. You know, and I would have even told the duty was crazy if he would have told me how I'm going to make a half a million dollars in my first year. Like I would have said, okay, yeah, slow it down a little bit, buddy. You know, I don't think to know this, not, you know, you try to shoot for the stars here, but he did it, you know, and it's kind of like that, you know, you run the first run the mile and under four minutes staying like now this guy's done it. And so I want to see how many other people are going to step up and do the same thing. I think there's a couple of things really messing the industry up right now. One is paid coaching. Like paid coaching is like people are going into debt. They're putting paid coaching $1,000 a month on credit cards and going into debt to learn how to high pressure people into trying to, you know, like handle objections and they're putting prospects in really awkward situations and making prospects run away from agents instead of trying to teach agents how to effectively communicate who they are as a person that they're here to help them and find out what the agent can do to help the prospect, not the other way around. And so that's one thing really hurting the industry, but this guy understood because he started watching my videos early on that it's about what can I do to help you. When he meets people at grocery stores, he hands business card, but he doesn't ask for their phone number. He didn't ask for their email. He doesn't ask for anything. He literally wants to give. He doesn't take anything. He just wants to give. And like that mentality, he's building a brand. So he was cold calling. He cold calls property owners. He'll pick a subdivision out. He'll pick a listing that's there, not even his listing. And he'll cold call that subdivision, you know, see what he can do to help people. He would cold call people. And then a week later, two weeks later, the people he cold called would see him walking around Kroger handing business cards out. And they would say, man, that guy's a hard worker. He's cold calling people. He's handing business cards out in the Kroger parking lot. And so all of a sudden that, that prospect is drawn to him like a magnet. Why? Because they see him working hard, you know, being a hard worker is not just, you know, saying it or working a little bit and trying to pretend like you work hard on social media and stuff. It's actually doing the work and working out, working everyone, even when nobody's looking. And that's what that guy does. So, you know, my one thing is that now, you know, let's take it a step further to how do we get in the mentality behind making a million dollars a year? Because I've done that for the last three years straight as a single agent. And it all came from me losing everything in the crash and realizing a couple things. One, closings happen every day, regardless of what the market does. I think a lot of agents are timid and scared of a possible recession at any moment. And so they don't fully commit to the business. They're scared to fully commit and then the market crashes and then where are they at? And they feel like a market crash is gonna crumble them, crumble their business, put them in a position where they're really hurt because they feel like if they put all their eggs in that basket and then that basket goes down, then they're gonna be annihilated. They're just gonna lose everything. They're gonna, you know, be just, it's just gonna be a disaster. And it's so far from the truth that's the complete wrong mindset. And because of this mindset that's so mainstream, it's preventing agents from fully committing and going all in with real estate and thus hurting their business today before the crash even happens. It's hurting their business now. And so you have to get in this mindset that closings happen every day, regardless of market conditions. Like we have the most incredibly stable career out there. Like we have one of the most, we have such job security. It's not even funny. Like iBuyers can't take our business. Zillow can't take our business. Amazon can't take our business. You know, it's like legal zoom, you know, when, when, you know, it came in, everybody, you know, was, oh, lawyers are going away. Lawyers are alive and well. You know, they're not going anywhere. Same thing with real estate agents. It's the same type of industry. It's only going to get better for real estate agents. We have better forms of communication. We have better ways to, to, to get deals done. You know what I mean? The electronic signature, bro, was like heaven on earth for me, bro. Cause I was doing everything like hard signature, faxing back and forth and all kinds of crazy stuff. Man, when they came out with that, it instantly made my life better right there. I can do all that stuff on my phone. It's just such an incredible time to be a real estate agent and moving forward, it's going to do nothing but get better and better and better. If the market crashes, okay, there's no such thing as a recession for a real estate agent. There's only a buyer's market, a seller's market and a mixed market between buyers and sellers. Nowhere in there is there a crash, a downturn, a depression, a recession. Nowhere in there, okay? Transactions continue to happen. Transactions go up and down. Prices go up and down. Days on the market go up and down. Inventory goes up and down. Everything goes up. It's constantly moving. It's never going to stay the same. Why should it matter if the market kind of crashes? So I think because transactions do go down during a crash, maybe they go down, but they don't go away, you know, and it creates so much urgency. When the market crashes, the buyers that buy during a crash, they want to buy right now while it's down, before it goes up. And the sellers have to sell now because they're in trouble, the market crashed on them. You know, there's so much urgency in the market that the crash creates. It's not even funny. When the market starts to decline, you immediately start doing exactly what my one thing is that my answer to this whole deal is, is continue building personal brand through voice to voice and digital marketing with as many property owners as humanly possible. And I'm not talking about Facebook leads, Zillow leads, Realtor.com leads. You know, that's the other thing that's really kind of a cancer in the industry right now. You know, A, paid coaching that's making agents go in debt that don't have the money teaching agents how to high pressure people and selling stuff and before you know if they're out of business and in debt. You know, the only thing that motivates agents about those coaching programs is the fact that they're in so much debt, they're trying to get out of it. And the other thing is, is these paid leads, you know what I'm saying, $300, $200, $100, $50 for a random person in your market's contact information. Like I don't care if it's $3. It's too much because this is just a random person in your market's contact information. Oh, they're a hot lead, they're thinking about buying, they're thinking about selling. Why do you think that? Because they were scanning through Zillow or looking on your website. Everybody's always kind of researching and looking and trying to keep up with the market. That doesn't mean that they're ready to buy or sell something right now. There's only so many transactions, Ricky. How can I be unlimited? There's only so many and then, you know, what if we divide by this and then there's only so many per agent? True. But the thing is, is each deal is such a process. You know, it takes time to get to the person, to have the conversation, to develop the relationship, to get to the point where they're ready, to list it or show the property, to go under contract, to close the deal. I mean, these deals take years sometimes. And so, what I mean by unlimited is more than you could ever handle for the rest of your life. All day, 24-7. You could work 24 hours, 7 days a week for the rest of your life and never even scratch the surface of the amount of business that's available to each and every agent. You can't talk to all the property owners in your area ever, never going to happen. And everybody has a different personality. You know, like you're going to match up with, you know, 20% of the people out there and this next agent is going to match up with this other group of people. Like, it's just so massive, you know, and everybody's always changing their minds by the minute. You know, you talk to a seller today, you know, another agent talks to them that afternoon and they already changed their mind now they're ready to sell. It's like, you can't keep up with how much business is really going on and going back to closings happen every day. If you go back to 2008 and look, you'll see, closings happen every day. Okay, what is a closing? A closing is two opportunities, a buyer and a seller. That's two opportunities to represent someone. And it was a closed deal that actually went through, not a listing, not an offer submitted, a negotiation. It's people that actually agreed on terms and then actually followed through with the actual deal and closed. Ricky, when I'm building a brand, personal brand, voice to voice and using digital media direct to property owners, how do I find these property owners? What's the best way? If I'm going to go voice to voice, you know, calling or knocking or in a grocery store or I'm going to go digital, what's my best path? What's my best strategy for actually finding these property owners? I think the best way to do it, the most effective way to do it, the way I do it, I use Red X. Okay, I'm going to use Geo leads. I'm going to target a subdivision. Boom. I'm going to get all the phone numbers. I'm going to call them all. I'm going to say, Hey, this is Ricky Krueger. He makes a Varnish Beach. How you doing? Good. I'm enjoying the day. Isn't it gorgeous? Cool. Look, I don't want to take it too much of your time, but a house around the corner just sold. Didn't know if there's anything in the world I could do for you. No. Well, look, do you have an agent you would work with? If you were to do something, okay, cool. Well, look, I'm sure you'll do something at some point in the future. I'd love the opportunity to work with you. Would it be okay if I just stayed in touch with you? Okay, cool. What's your email address? So I do that amongst every as many property owners as I possibly could. What I'm going to find is I'm going to listen. I'm not just going to run through the script like I just did. I'm going to slow down. I'm going to listen. I'm looking for opportunities. I'm trying to get in a long conversations with people and see and really connect with them, get them talking, get them feeling comfortable with me. And I'm going to find deals today through doing this. I'm also going to build my business for the future at the same time, because I'm going to collect all these email addresses. I'm going to do this weekly email. I'm also going to plug them into Facebook and do direct sponsored ads straight to my database. So that's one method, all right, is that way. And then you have just the general method where you just pick out the demographics of your area. If you want to go 25-year-olds and hire in this area and just straight start running ads to the general public, so you can do it a couple of different ways. That's the two ways that I like the best is to always run an ad, always have some kind of ad running maybe once a week, change it up once a week, and have an ad running to the general public of your market. And then always have another ad running straight to your actual clients that you've actually talked to and that you're building your business around. You know what I'm saying?