 That's a little bit above 2008. 2008, there was 4.12 million transactions. So we're not too far away from 2008 numbers in terms of the number of transactions in the country. But people getting out of the business just never really were in the business. We were scared because we didn't know if our family was gonna die, if we were gonna die, if we were, if the planet was even gonna exist. We're about to have the largest real estate service that we've ever seen. And here is why. And the longer that protraction lasts, the bigger the explosion is, the bigger the resurgence is on the back end. That portability was amazing for the last decade. They're gonna be more than happy to list their home and buy their dream home for, you know, a percent or so less than they're in right now. So it's gonna have an office effect later. All these leads that I'm telling you are free are the same quality of leads that people spend thousands of dollars for. Okay, cool. Hey, yeah, good to be here. How many people are in the world? Can you see that? I've got about 16 in the world and we have some on workplace chat and we have some in our Google Meet. So we're kind of spread out. Nice, nice. Good morning, good morning. Yeah, no, I've been a real estate for one years. Mostly as a real estate agent. At this point, I do mostly investing, buying and holding, building the brokerage, traveling speaking, writing books, creating content, trying to coach agents. So back in 2017, I became the first completely free real estate coach in the industry. I did that to leverage my success in real estate to build a massive brand that I could then leverage to build massive businesses. So it was kind of a risky move and but it's paid off really well. I enjoy what I do. I have a lot of time to spend with the family. I have one employee, which is my real estate assistant that kind of handles everything on the back end. I'm into sales, mortgage, coaching, investing and building the brokerage of course. So yeah, no, it's been a roller coaster and what I'm really good at is helping agents understand that there's always opportunity in the market. Right now is actually the greatest opportunity I've ever seen. And it's really the best time to get in the business and really build it. We can get into whatever you guys wanna get into. I asked, Carmen asked me to speak and I said, sure, I'm more than open and doing kind of a Q&A style situation. I didn't wanna get into me rambling about whatever subject I thought you guys might wanna hear about. I would much rather hear what questions you have, what struggles you guys are having in your business so that I can give you my two cents and hopefully help you maybe visualize a more efficient business and get more done in less time and really look at this for what it is. As I said, the greatest opportunity we've ever seen. So yeah, happy to dive into whatever questions you guys have today. They may wanna go first. I know I have a question. So when you say it's the best opportunity you've ever seen, I know there's been thousands of real estate agents leave the business in droves lately. What do you see as the opportunistic opportunity here and why so many other people don't see it that way and get down to the business? Well, it's a good question, but it's totally normal though because I mean, the bottom line is this business is a lot harder than people think it is. So they get in with false expectations and then when they realize how hard it really is, then a lot of people drop out and that actually gets magnified whenever the market shifts. So right now we're looking at 4.2, 4.3 million transactions this year in the country. And that's pretty much, that's a little bit above 2008. 2008 there was 4.12 million transactions. So we're not too far away from 2008 numbers in terms of the number of transactions in the country. So this is as slow as it gets. Now there's a lot, there are some entities out there who are projecting that we could dip into the 3 million, the high 3 millions or even lower. And that's a possibility, anything's a possibility. But we are, I mean, in my opinion, where this is about as slow as it's gonna be. And anybody who is keeping their head above water right now is really gonna see an explosion in their business as the market resurges. But this is totally normal for when the market shifts all the people that weren't making it when the market was great kind of tend to get out of the business. We saw a very massive surge of agents come in through the pandemic when people were sitting at their houses with nothing to do. It's 300 bucks to take your real estate course, get rich quick kind of thing. So this is totally normal. The people getting out of the business just never really were in the business. And that really doesn't matter to any of us. The real opportunity is, I mean, let's just take it back. I could tell you a bunch of different, I might give you a lot of different points in time. I'll just give you one, for example, when we were all quarantine, when we were all, the economy was shut down and we were told to stay in our houses, that was mid-March to May 1st in 2020. What was going through our heads at that point? Well, we were scared because we didn't know if our family was gonna die, if we were gonna die, if the planet was even gonna exist. If we were even gonna have jobs, there was a lot of uncertainty. That was a very fearful time during that time. There's a video on YouTube that I put out April 20th, I believe it was, when we were still shut down and I said simply, we're about to have the largest real estate serves that we've ever seen. And here is why. And I did a video about it that's still on YouTube that was put out while we were shut down, the economy was completely shut down. Most people have this fear of uncertainty and don't know what's happening, but it was very clear to me what was about to happen. And what did happen? Well, we saw one of the largest real estate surges that we've ever seen. How did I see that coming? Well, it's an educated guess. I was always a really good test taker, but it's not hard for me to see what's gonna happen in the market over the next, say, six months. It's really hard to predict a year out, two years out, five years out, but over the next two, three, four, five, six months, unless something catastrophic happens, it's really easy to see what direction the market's going in. The market moves really slow. And during that shutdown, when I saw the retraction of transactions, okay? Every time I see a retraction of transactions, I know that there is pent up demand brewing. And the longer that retraction lasts, the bigger the explosion is, the bigger the resurgence is on the backend. Same thing here. We're seeing this real massive, I think we're down 20% transactions this year, year over year so far. That's a massive retraction. And by the way, that was the same amount that we were down during that shutdown. We had 20% last transactions and 20% last pending deals during that 45-day economic shutdown. When I saw that 20% less transactions and pending deals, I said, oh my gosh, we're about to see this incredible surge. Now, the surge that happened last way longer than I thought it would. And that was due to the stimulus and the lower interest rates and supply and demand and everything like that. But what I'm seeing right now, and I could give you a lot more points, like back in December, I said, this is the bottom for prices. Well, the bottom actually hit late January and we're up on the year from January to now. We're up getting close to about 10%. We're about to go positive year over year during the time that we hit an all-time high last year. Last year, we hit all-times high in June and we're about to hit positive year over year. Zillow already said we're positive year over year in May. We're up 0.9%, basically 1% year over year from May to May. We're gonna see the other entities fall in line. It's gonna be like Domino's. We're gonna see Redfin, we're gonna see Fannie Mae, realtor.com, NAR, we're gonna see all of them come out and say we're positive year over year. During a time where 12 months ago, we were at an all-time high, which means what? Which means we're about to hit all-time highs. Now, this is nationally, right? Every market's local and of course, there are markets that are still down a little here and there, but every single market I look at is up from the bottom, which happens sometime putting on the market in January or February, something like that. But nevertheless, I'm saying all that to say this, that the retraction of transactions that we see right now, coupled with the historic, we've never had this low of inventory in the month of May and June. It's never happened, right? Never been this low. Even in the craziest years we've had over the past couple of years where we're like, oh, there's no inventory. It's even lower right this second. And historic demand. If you go back and look at, I mean, if you zoned it at a survey where 98% of millennials want to become homeowners, let's say that's off. Let's say it's 80%, 85, 90, whatever, a lot of them, okay? There's 72 million millennials. Well, if you go back and look, 1990 birth rates, we had a massive spike, not just a little bump, but like a massive spike that lasts for 16 years after that. And that literally represents, that's 33 years ago. If you look at the average age of a first-time home buyer, last year was 36, the year before it was 33. So let's just say it's between 33 and 36 years old. So we have the most, by far, 33-year-olds, people turning 30-33 this year, who will be 34 next year, 35 next year, then another group turning 33 next year. We, in decades, we haven't seen the amount of people who want to become homeowners, who are in their prime buying years. This is actually happening right now as we speak. And we don't even know it because all of this is being suppressed by mortgage rates. We have that happening, which is unprecedented. We've got people that are sitting in their house who won't sell because mortgage rates are so high and they're sitting on such low mortgage rates currently that won't sell, that literally hate their home. And every single day that goes by, they want to move more and more and more. And at some point, there's going to be a line drawn. I don't know if it's when mortgage rates get down to 5% or five and a half, or there's going to be something that incentivizes people that are sitting on these low rates to go and sell those properties. And so there's just this immigrants, right? People coming in here from other countries, like they're renting, which makes property baleys go up because now rent goes up. There's a massive amount of multifamily being built right now. There's a lot of things happening right this second in the market that's just really incredibly positive for the market, especially when it comes to prices. The one negative place in the market, I feel, is that there are a lot of first-time home buyers being priced out of the market. Affordable housing is kind of going to the wayside, where this is a growing concern. But I'll tell you this, a lot of people that talk about unaffordability and how high mortgage payments are and how something's got to give, well, I'll just say this to you, and that is that if you look at a graph and you look at mortgage payments and you look at that, you adjust that graph to inflation, you'll see that, and if you look at mortgage payments, if you look at percentage of people's household incomes that goes towards mortgage payments, if you look at that data, you'll see that back in the late 80s and 90s and early 2000s, we were at this, let's just call it normal level, and then we dipped down after 2008 for about a decade. It was ridiculously low for like, affordability was amazing for the last decade. And if you look at that graph, you realize how spoiled we've been over the last 10 years and how if you look at the graph and where it is now, compared to the early 2000s, 90s, late 80s, you'll see that we're just right in line with the 90s, 80s, early 2000s. We're just kind of getting back to normal. And a lot of people are complaining about this. I can't afford a house and this is crazy and people are barely, well, yeah, but the thing is is that's because you grew accustomed to the way it's been over the last 10 years, which was completely unrealistic. There's never been a time where prices went down 50% and mortgage rates were down into the 2% range, never. And so you were spoiled by that and now you thought that was the new norm, but it wasn't. Now we're getting back to normal. That was a moment in history that we should have all taken more advantage of than we have, but you can't go back, but we can realize that this is the new norm. I saw a video of a newscast in 1981 and it was in Canada and they talked about how mortgage rates were up into the 17 range, 18 range. And they've been that way for about a year and they got down into the 15 range and it was like an atomic bomb. Buyers just came out of nowhere and they interviewed a few of those buyers and what the buyer said was is that, you know what, if you need a house, you can't get lower interest rates. You have to deal with the interest rates that you have and what happened was is those buyers just grew accustomed to higher mortgage rates. And that's, I think we're going through a transition period where we're getting back to normal, where normal affordability from that late 80s, 90s and early 2000s, it's just going to take us a little time for the consumers to kind of grow accustomed to the fact that we're going to be in this five to 7% mortgage rate for a while and prices are going to go higher. Prices are going to continue to go higher. So I'll end that part of the market with this. Same reason why sellers won't list their property right now because they're sitting on low interest rates. What do you think that the people who are buying at today 6.5% rates are going to do in two to three years when rates are 5.5 and they want to upgrade, right? They're going to be more than happy to list their home and buy their dream home for, you know, a percent or so less than they're in right now. So it's going to have the opposite effect later. Realize that. Right now there's lower inventory because we're 23% less new listings this year compared to last year because sellers don't want to sell because we're sitting on low interest rates. That's going to be opposite later when people that are buying into these 6.5 and 7% rates can buy into a 5.5 rate in two to three years. And they're going to be happy to list and that's going to help inventory. This is going to take several years to play out and inventory to settle out. And in the meantime, prices are going to continue to go up because of the reasons of the pent-up demand that I've said. Builders are really racking up right now like because there's no existing homes are going on the market basically. And so, but there's all this demand. So this is creating a very, very advantageous opportunity for home builders. And we saw that in the last home builder report, right? It was expected to be a 1.3 million on an annually adjusted basis, home starts for the year. But what did we see? 1.6 million. That's amazing. That's crazy. And it's because of everything I'm saying. So that's why I think it's the best opportunity ever in real estate for agents, especially for investors because we're about to see the market research and it's going to be violent. Back in 2008, it took it about five years to get back to go from 4.1 back to 5 million transactions in the country. It's not going to happen this time. We're at 4.2, 4.3. It's not going to take it five years to get back to 5 million transactions in the country. It's going to be a violent, knee-jerk, V-shaped recovery when it comes to the number of transactions just because of the sheer amount of demand. And if we can get mortgage rates straightened out, but there within lies the problem, right? If they lower mortgage rates, prices shoot through the moon and we're in a really bad place, affordability-wise. If they raise interest rates, inventory is going to stay incredibly low and that's going to make prices go up, right? So we're in a real catch-22 and it's fun. I'm excited to follow and kind of see where it goes. So what was the question? Thank you. That was a great answer. Does anyone here want to unmute their mic or put a question in the chat or I'll go to some that we had submitted via email? All right, one of the ones that we had come in via email was how do you generate leads on a low budget? Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So like you don't have to spend any money to get leads, right? You could go out and build your entire real estate business off free leads. Okay, you could do a lot of things. Number one, social media is free, right? You can create content every day and DM every single person in your market. You can call for sell-by-owners for free. You can doorknock for free. You can do open houses for free. What else can you do for free? Call your sphere. You can go to networking events, meet people. There's tons of stuff you can do for free. And honestly, all these leads that I'm telling you are free are the same quality of leads that people spend thousands of dollars for and that give 35% referrals for and so on and so forth. They're the same, they're the same people. Like the leads that you buy are literally the same person you could have met at a gas station, doorknocked for sell-by-owner, went to an open house, all the same people, right? It's people in your market, somebody you DM'd on Instagram and they went back and forth with you and you helped them buy a house. So there's a lot of stuff you can do for free. If you're sitting there feeling like you're handcuffed because you don't have money to spend on marketing and leads and stuff, then you're making excuses. So another question was, do you have any lead generation tools that you recommend? Well, my favorite is RedX because I can target the exact property owners, the exact subdivision I want to do business with and get their phone number, email address, I can hit them, I can call, text, email and hit them on social media. They have ad builder that I can run social media ads directly to the property owners on there and it's all really, really cheap. Like you can run your entire business or even an entire team off of like 500 bucks a month and literally have tens of thousands of leads to work with. Did you see Daniel's question he put in the chat? He wants to know, what are your favorite business podcast at the moment and for new agents, what podcast would you recommend? No, I don't really listen to anything. I'm too busy researching and reading and making videos myself and stuff like that. But, I mean, there's not a whole lot of them, especially when it comes to real estate. And there's not a whole lot of good ones when you, when you, when you know, there's not a whole lot of them and then when you filter out the ones that aren't any good, it's really not any, but yeah, I mean, like I say, there's not that many, get in there and listen to a few and latch on. And once you come across somebody you're following, yeah, go really deep on them, listen to a lot of their stuff and really, that's what I used to do. I would listen to a lot of, who all did I used to listen to? Grant, I listened to a lot of Grant Cardone. Who else did I listen to? There were a couple and I just went really deep. I just listened to like 24 seven, just as much as I could, absorbed all that I could and took it with me and tried to help mold my business into my own, right? That was really the goal is to mold your business into your own business, your own style. You know, not, no, no, yeah, everybody's business is like a fingerprint, right? Every single business, every agent's business is gonna be completely different. There's not gonna be one that's identical to the next. Even if you did the exact same stuff, talk to the exact same people, it doesn't matter. People are gonna react to you differently, connect with you differently, how you look, your communication style, everything's different. So everybody's business is like a fingerprint and you gotta kind of mold yours into what you feel like is the most efficient machine. You know, I sold 100 properties a year for eight years in a row as a single agent with one assistant and I just created this very incredibly efficient machine built around very simple systems. And I think a lot of agents overcomplicate the process and they add too many jobs for their self, you know, like keeping up with, you know, the anniversary of when people bought the home or what people's dog's birthdays are and when their kids are going to school and stuff like that, you don't realize it, but even if you spend 30 minutes a week on stuff like that, that does not matter. That's 26 hours in a year. You know how much damage you can do in 26 hours, but you don't realize it because you think that's just 30 minutes a week. That time compounded over the course of a year, that 26 hours could be the difference in you doubling your business if you spin it in a more efficient way and on a more productive actions. So I don't know, I think a little different. And you have to think different if you're gonna be a super efficient agent who closes two deals a week for eight years in a row working like five, 10, 15 hours a week. That's the thing. So anyway, I can dive into anything you guys want. Anybody wanna ask a question or I can go into some more we have in the chat. Hey, Ricky, Mark, Karen's in Nashville. Yo. Hey, how you doing? Well, thank you. Got a question. So our business is about oh, 70% beer and referral clients and probably 30% people calling out signs or some type of lead generation. And this last time, maybe this last six months or this last year that 30% that leads are going off signs that buyers have been pretty flaky and hard to get them to commit. I haven't used the hammered on the buyer's representation agreement, but I feel I need to do something a little bit better just to get people to commit when they're really not sure that they wanna commit. Any thoughts or comments on that? You know, we're gonna make someone commit that doesn't wanna commit. And shoving a contract in their face saying sign here is actually gonna do the opposite of what you're trying to do. It's gonna make them say, okay, I'll go use another agent who's not trying to just give me this on a contract, right? So we're in a place in the market right now where there is a lot of uncertainty and the general public, of course, people are buying. You know, they're seeing news articles where prices are gonna go down and interest rates are high and all this. And we're gonna wait and kind of see what happens. Well, in my opinion, that's kind of a mistake because like, for example, I'm buying five new construction homes right now to buy and rent out. And I can buy these houses in the three to 350 range right now, you know, and even as an, I've got a investor rate of 6% later, I can refinance those if I want to at a lower rate, but I can't buy them at today's prices later. And tomorrow's prices, this is just my opinion, another educated guess is gonna be higher. I mean, even if prices are 10 to 15% higher over the next year or two, that's a lot, especially seeing as how we're about to hit all-time highs as it is. So it's hard to articulate this to the buyers and, you know, all you can do is kind of tell them what you think and then let them do their own thing. You're not gonna figure out a way, bro, to magically get them to buy a house when they don't want to buy a house. And that's honestly not your job. Your job is to help them do whatever it is they're trying to do. So I think what you maybe should understand is that if your business is taking a hit right now, but you're still working like a dog and you're still contacting and you're still showing and you're still following up and you're still working the same, you're still making the same amount of contacts because you're closing less properties, that's just a matter of the market retracting, which is incredibly temporary. And if you can kind of stop trying to close deals and start trying to just connect with these people and try to create lifelong friends and clients out of these buyers who, you know, let's just say 80% of them don't buy right now, just think about how massive your business is gonna be when we see the resurgence in the market and we go from 4.3 million to 5.3 million transactions. That's gonna be violent, by the way. And your business is gonna just explode. You know, when things are down, we think they're never gonna come up. When they're up, we think they're never gonna come down. This is a very temporary moment right here. There's so much pent up demand. It's not even funny. And I think just give it some time. I think be a little patient. Quit trying to figure out a way to force people into stuff, trying to get them to commit. Be more of the educator. And, you know, if you start trying to force, you're gonna lose these clients and they're gonna go use another agent when they decide to actually buy. So that's my two cents. Anybody else wanna unmute and ask a question? Say, Kara, you have your hand up. Do you have a question? Yeah, I do. So I am a newer agent. I'm one of the lovely ones that happened to join in 2020 just out of coincidence. And obviously the market has changed tremendously over the last couple of years. And because I'm newer, I feel like that gives me a lack of confidence due to a lack of knowledge with how things change and stuff. So I guess my question would be is how or what is the best way to kind of stay on top of things when I don't have tons of transactions coming in since I'm newer and still building in order to, like I say, give myself, to me, knowledge is what gives me confidence. And so I try to find those things that provide that. I guess so what would you recommend? You just wanna stay on top of the market? Well, just in general, I mean, market plus, I guess, like, I mean, how to do, how to, I mean, a part of this too, I think would help if having a mentor maybe, but part of it, I think too is knowing how to negotiate properly. I mean, just kind of all the new agent unknowns. Yeah, so with the market, just watch your MLS hot sheet every day. First thing we do when you get to the office or whatever is go to your MLS, pull up the hot sheet, new listings, closings, pendings, expires. You don't have to memorize everything. Just kind of scan through it every day and pay attention. You'll see new listings pop up. You'll see a good pending in a week. You'll see a close in 30 days and you'll really have your pulse on the market. You'll start to spit out things, just second nature that you didn't even know you knew. Things that come in the market, you'll a client will ask you something and you're just gonna be like a market expert and you didn't even know it. It happens so fast if you're looking at that hot sheet every day. So that's a good way to kind of keep your finger on the pulse of the market. Is just take some time to research your local market through the MLS every day. As far as like learning the ins and outs of the business and the cadence of negotiating and writing offers and things like that. It's something that just kind of comes to you over time from doing it, of course, but you do need to have somebody you can kind of go to with questions. I don't know if you've done any deals yet, but you know, EXP should have a local mentor from the mentorship program for you that you can utilize. But I would find somebody that's willing to help and to kind of help you through the first couple of deals or whatever that you can kind of lean on for some of that stuff, you know, but I wouldn't sweat it too much. I feel like you're putting a little too much weight on all that. I think that if you take a little weight off that and distribute that weight a little over to the, hey, I'm just want to help people. Because like when I walk into a listing appointment, I'm, you know, I'm a high D. So I don't do listing presentations. I, you know, I don't have anything prepared. I have the comps and maybe I glanced at them. I don't, I didn't have, I don't have anything memorized. I don't really know anything, but I go in here with complete confidence that I don't care about all that. What I do care about is, you know, why is this, you know, homeowner thinking about selling, right? I want to understand the backstory and I want to put together a plan to help that that homeowner through whatever it is they're trying to do. See, people don't just wake up one day and say, I want to sell a property for no reason. You know, there's something going on in their life. Their mom died, their kids went to college, they lost a job, they had a baby. Something's happening here. The transaction's kind of a byproduct of something happening in their life. And so I really want to understand what's happening in their life that's causing them to make this decision. Because as I said, the transaction's kind of like something just on the side. That transaction is just to help them get to the next chapter of their life or whatever. Even if it's an investment property, whatever it is, there's a reason behind it. And that's what I got to find out. And that's all I care about. I don't care about all this other stuff, you know, the market and how to negotiate. I mean, I'll tell you how to negotiate. You know, you get the listing and when you get an offer, you say, here's the offer. You know, how do you want to respond? They tell you how they want to respond. You tell the other agent, here's how my client wants to respond. They give you their response. You give it back to the seller. And here's what they said about that. How do you want to respond? All right, it's not up to you to negotiate. This isn't your property. You know, it's the client's decisions on how they want to respond and what they want to do, right? So again, I think you're putting a little bit too, not that you shouldn't put any weight on it, but just, it sounds like you're putting a little too much weight on those things. And if you can redistribute that weight or, you know, away from there, still leaving some there, but kind of more so leaning on the fact that you're a good person, that you're a hard worker, that people like you, that you want to help people and put more weight behind that, show people who you really are, I think that you'll be in a lot better place. Okay, thank you. Anybody want to unmute and ask a question? Hi, I would just like to kind of piggyback after the last lady's question, because I think that for us newer agents, we're kind of more confused on what we should be doing on a daily basis outside of, I've done the phone calls, I've done the messaging people on Facebook and Instagram and it's not necessarily as effective as I would have thought that it would have been. And it's not like I did it just for a little while and I stopped and I didn't give it enough time. I literally didn't get any results from that. And so it was discouraging. So how do you move past that discouragement of reaching out to everybody that you know and still not really getting any leads and then not knowing what to be doing on a daily basis to feel like you're being productive in the real estate world. Did you call people you don't know? I did a little of what they're calling, driving for dollars, got a few addresses and called those people, but never got anyone extra really interested in selling their property. So here's the thing and this is incredibly common, totally normal. This is very, very, you know, just classic general, pretty much happens to every single agent, right? You have a perception in your mind of how hard this business is gonna be. When you get into the business, you're on this high and you know, this is your own boss, you make your own money, you set your own schedule, you know, this is gonna be great and you're on this high and then you have people tell you this is gonna be hard. And you're like, oh yeah, I know it's gonna be hard. I'm ready for hard. And you have this conception, this perception in your mind of how hard this is gonna be. But what you don't realize is that the reality behind it is that you need to multiply whatever you thought, how hard you thought the business was gonna be and multiply that times about 20. And that's actually how hard it's gonna be. And when we get in, we have this expectation that, oh, well, if we call everybody we know and we do a few dollar driving for dollars, then we're gonna get a deal. But that's not how it works. And just about every agent on this call that is experienced will tell you that chances are if you get a deal, you're lucky if you got a deal out of any of that. Cause that's just not the reality for anybody. Sometimes people get lucky and they get a deal really quick and that could be dangerous because now they have a misconception of how the business really operates and they kind of feel like it's a little easier than it really is. And I've seen a lot of agents come in and do a quick deal and end up quitting the business within 10 to 12 months because they just kind of didn't really work that hard from that point cause they thought things were just gonna fall in their lap like that first deal did. It's actually a good thing that you did all this and didn't really get a deal because now you're getting a dose of the reality of the business. The thing is, is that it takes a long time for your business to mature. As a new agent, we haven't planted any seeds. You haven't developed any relationships. When you go on a listing appointment and you're up against two other agents and you lose the listing to another one of the two agents, you think, oh, that agent is more, it's more popular. He's more experienced, he's a great closer, but that's not the case. The fact is, is that that agent probably cold called or met them on social media or Zillow or something three years ago and they've been staying in touch via weekly email, social media texts, phone call, direct mail, whatever, they've been staying in touch very consistently and proved to that seller over the course of time that they are consistent, that they are a full-time agent, that they are here, you know, they're not going anywhere and that they're professional and knowledgeable. They've developed this relationship and then you go to the listing appointment and you think it's because that person was a great closer. No, you just met the seller. This other agent has planted the seed with them for three years and that relationship has matured and they still wanted to get a couple other opinions but then of the day, they picked the person that they felt the most comfortable with that has been there the whole time. So you got to understand as a new agent, you haven't planted any seeds years ago, you just got in the business and then all these people that you're talking to, there's a lot of these people that aren't going to do business with you until two to three to four to five years down the road and so you've got to put systems in place that everyone you talk to never forgets who you are. All right, I do it through a weekly email to my entire database on the same day of the week to show dependability, consistency, hard work, determination, professionalism, all the things that they want in the agent, it shows them that. That's my system where I don't have to worry about home adversaries and all that stuff. They know who I am, they're going to remember me forever. There's a good chance they're going to call me when they decide to do something. Nevertheless, what I'm getting at here, there's so many things to unpack with your situation. It's way harder than you thought it was going to be. I'm sure you realize that now. Now is the moment where you say, oh, okay, you know what? It is harder than I thought it was going to be, but Ricky can do it and all these other agents are doing it. So if they can do it, I know I can do it, right? You're not going through anything that none of us on here that has succeeded has went through. So the question is, is can you stomach how hard the business actually is to get going? And can you get through that hard part of the business what's last a couple of years to really get your feet under you to get some real momentum in the business to where your closing deals on a consistent basis. Can you handle that pressure? And that's why a lot of agents quit because they can't handle that pressure because it is extremely hard. So first realize that, make a decision that, okay, it's hard, but you know what? I'm up for the challenge. I'm in this for the next 30 years. I don't care if it takes two to three to four to five years to get going. I'm going to do this. Then it's like, okay, you've made that decision. Now you're good. Now let's settle into what we need to do day to day which you said you're having trouble with. That's not hard either. But the thing is, is I don't know your situation, right? I don't know if you're working a full-time job and doing real estate on the side. As a new agent, a lot of new agents are part-time in the beginning. They're working around a schedule. Maybe they have a family with kids, right? Everybody has different schedules and stuff. So what you have to do as a new agent is you have to delegate. You have to basically look at your week and say, okay, I'm going to 100% dedicate these hours on these days to building my real estate business. So I'm not going to ask you because they may turn into a long conversation, but a lot of agents I talk to that are new, that have part-time, they're doing a part-time and stuff, they haven't really mapped out, okay? I'm going to work from three to five on Wednesday and two to five on Friday. I'm going to dedicate those hours 100% to building my real estate business. I'm going to get after it during those hours. Most agents are just kind of like whatever, whenever. Well, if you're not dedicating time to your business to build it, you're not going to have a business. So that's the first thing, we got to dedicate that. If you're full-time, if you actually are working at hours a day on your real estate business for whatever reason, then it comes down to a couple of things. I can make a really easy, just simple daily routine for you, okay? If you're working eight hours a day, okay? As soon as you sit down at your computer, right? It's eight o'clock, okay? For the first 15 minutes, you're going to map out your day. Go through your emails, your text messages, brainstorm, think of everything you need to think of for the day, put it all on sheet of paper with your schedule, your to-do list, hot listings you're going after, calls you need to make, everything's on one sheet of paper that way. You don't have to worry about nothing the rest of the day. You don't even got to think. You know exactly what you got to do when you get to do it and what the goals are for the day. Boom, that's done. 15 minutes. Eight 15, study MLS hot sheet for 15 minutes. Eight 30, who are we calling today? And why? What's the purpose? What's the script? Where's the numbers? All that stuff, because by nine o'clock I'm dialing. From nine to 12, I'm making calls. I don't care who you're calling. Spear for sell by owner, circle prospecting, expires, internet leads, Zilla leads, Facebook leads, Instagram leads, open house leads, network I don't care who you're calling but you better be calling somebody or you're not gonna be closing deals. Nine to 12, we're on the phone. After 12, we're gonna do all of our marketing, handwritten letters, making our videos, doing our weekly email, direct mail, SEO, blogs, whatever you do. Now this makes things really super simple. If your goal during the calls is to make five new friends a day, if you look at, and this is a real study, nor did I study, okay? The number one reason why people choose real estate agents because they had a friend in the business with a great reputation. And it was like 32%. All the other reasons were less than one. What brokers they're with, online, all that stuff. The number one reason, just all the rest of them were non-existent. This one reason was the reason. Friend in the business with a great reputation. What does that tell you? Your job is to make friends in the market, period. So if you can make five new friends a day with property owners in the market, you spend that nine to 12, that's the whole goal, right? Over the course of five years, 250 working days a year, you can have 6,000 friends in the market. If you got 6,000 friends who own property in the market that's gonna weekly email from you on the same day of the week forever, how big do you think your business is? Right, you're the number one agent in your market and everybody's gonna ask you how you did it. You're gonna say, oh, I just followed this dude named Rookie in Alabama and he said, look at MLS every day, put my schedule together, make five new friends a day and do social media after lunch. And guess what? Now I'm a multi-millionaire and I'm the number one agent in my market. This stuff is not hard guys. Really super simple. But I wanna go back to the person that asked the question and make sure that I cleared everything up for you and see if you have any follow up questions. Yes, that was a beautiful response but I do have a few follow up questions. One, what type of content are you putting in your emails? And two, where are you getting phone numbers from of people that you don't know? Go to redxredxdiscount, so you can get the discount. Okay, redxdiscount.com, get geoledesplus and expiresplus. Geoledesplus, you can pick out 7,500 property owners of your choice. Pick out the subdivisions. You get their phone numbers and email addresses. With expiresplus, go back 10 years worth of expires, cancels and withdrawals and have all that expired data for years, right? And call them and say, hey, I saw you were trying to sell this house a couple of years ago. Whatever happened with that? Boom, they open up and have a conversation with you. Brings you to present day, what they're looking to do now, how you can help them. Really super simple stuff. So that's where you find phone numbers. And then the email, if you, so I've been doing my weekly email since 2007. And in 2017, I was literally able to just quit prospecting altogether. That was the first year I made a million bucks. Made a million dollars every year since with zero prospecting, zero social media, zero anything, just doing the weekly email. You guys can go to startmyweeklyemail.com and see all the weekly emails that I've done since November. I have them posted there. And there's a link where you can get my template. You can just use the same template and just do the same thing. Just go there and look at all the emails I did, use my template and just copy what I do. Can I ask you a question real quick? When you are using the X-Sphere and the phone numbers that you're getting from these sites, how do you deal with the call list? The what? No call list, even no call list. The what? The what? The do not call list. The what? You're gonna get a lot of pain and trouble, Mr. Ruthie. I didn't say anything. I didn't hear the question. I didn't say a word. Listen, here's the bottom line of the whole thing. I'm not calling to sell somebody's house. I'm calling as thinking of yourself as a volunteer worker doing community outreach to people in your area to see what it is you can do to help them. I call a property owner. You're a real estate agent? Yeah, I don't wanna sell my house. Good! That's not why I'm calling today, sir. I'm calling as a member of the community here to let you know a house did sell around the corner from you and just calling to see how you're doing today, man. See if there's something I could do to help you. I'm not trying to do a deal with you today. I'm trying to see if there's something I can do. I don't care about what I can't do for you. Let's talk about what you do need, right? So I'm not calling to solicit. I'm not calling to sell. I'm not calling to list. I'm not asking them if they thought about selling. I'm not calling to present a rental property to them. I'm not trying to sell anything. I'm calling as a friend, right? A member of the same community they live in to see how they're doing. See if I can connect with them. See if there's something I could do to help them. Yeah, it's more of a survey kind of call, which, by the way, is totally legal, even for do not call, to do a survey. Who was trying to ask a question at the same time, Kim, was I think someone else had a question? I have a question. This is Fonda Handmaker out of Manchester, Tennessee. No, Ricky, how are you? Doing good. How you doing, Fonda? I love that name. F-H-O-N-D-A. Yeah, that's his first name, Shonda and Rhonda, so I'm the Fonda. Beautiful. So, Ricky, what we're seeing is like, sellers have expectations of it flying off the market still and we're not there yet. So, how do you communicate with them just to keep them in your rah-rah or your cheerleading and just let them know? I do set expectations of, hey, it's a different market now. We're looking at 30, 60, 90 days, depending on their price range. So, how do you deal with that right now? As far as if they're already listed with me, how to keep them engaged and happy with how things are going or to get the listing pre-listing? No, you've already got the listing but just want them to still be your rah-rah even though their house has been listed for 35 days. Well, the market gives us data. Even no showings is data, right? And so, all we can do is give them the data. We're not, you know, we're not the, we're not Fonda, Hatmaker, the Rainmaker here. We, you know, we, all we do is educate and try to help, okay? So, you know, I contact, if I'm not talking to my seller every day or week because we're showing the property and I have to talk to them on a regular basis anyway, if it's one of those sellers I never really talked to for whatever reasons, I'm at least going to talk to them every other week and give them an update on what's happening with their property, you know, on the market with the feedback from any buyers that have looked at it, how many showings we've had and also anything that's changed in that subdivision or condo complex since we listed it or since last time we talked to them, you know? So like, if there was another one listed, one under contract, hey, this one went pending. Remember that house we talked about that was on the market we were kind of competing with? It went pending, you know? And you can kind of compare that house to this house and, you know, have those conversations with them, but it's kind of like you're, you both are detectives. It's, you know, like when a house isn't selling, it's kind of like you're both detectives. You are kind of a detective partner with a seller, trying to figure this thing out. You know, why hasn't it sold? What do we need to do to get it sold? You know, let's look at these properties and how this happened in days on the market over here and price per square foot. And this one had a upstairs and this one was a better view and, you know, all those things. So I think it's a matter. I think the rah-rah comes from the fact that you're not shying away from the fact that it hasn't sold yet, that you're kind of hitting the head on. You're happy to call them and talk to them about it and see if they want to make any changes. If they're good with it, if it, you know, if it hasn't been shown at all and they're good with how things are going, they're happy with the price, they're happy with you, they're happy with no showings, great. Let's keep going like it is. They're not happy with that. It's like, okay, well, we need to make an adjustment because it's not being shown at this price, you know, when you got properties in the same neighborhood that are selling, their price is a little lower. You know, it's a very price sensitive market right now. You know, if you're off by 10,000, literally, 10,000 dollars, that could be the difference in it sitting on the market and not selling and selling in literally a day. I've seen it over and over again. So I don't know. Every seller's different, you know? So I think I'm filling them out, seeing how they feel and just trying to guide them best you can and help them do what they want to do. Being really honest with them too. Thank you. And it was like a miracle. I had this listing, it went expired, we re-listed same price, we never dropped the price. A month and a half into the new listing just yesterday, I got five offers on that property there. And I was like, what just happened? And I think it's because we weren't reducing, reducing. We had it priced right. It was a specialty property. And it was showing periodically. And then we had like eight showings and got five offers on it. So I think that if it's priced right, you kind of stick to your guns and don't reduce. Or do you think that, Ricky? Yeah, I think it depends on the seller. I don't want to tell the seller not to reduce if they want to reduce, because if I tell them to do something against what they want to do and then it doesn't work out, then they're going to say, hey, they're going to kind of blame it on me. I want to help them do whatever it is they want to go, whatever direction they want to go with it. But on the flip side, for me, I have to look at your specific market, but prices are going up, not down. So if something's a little overpriced today, it's probably going to be the right price tomorrow. So having a little patience, I think we'll go a long way with some of this. Rod, thank you so much. I got time for one more, ladies and gentlemen. Rebecca, did you have your hand up? I did. What's your question? Well, it was more of a comment in regards to how you started this meeting that you were an investor and that you buy and hold, et cetera. So I would love to start fostering a relationship, see if there's anything that we can possibly do to get together and do commercial and residential here in Tennessee. If you have multifamily, apartment complexes and stuff, feel free to send me any of those deals. I'll evaluate them and decide if it's something we want to go after. Ricky, what was that email, I'm sorry, what was the website address that you gave out for your weekly emails? Some people didn't catch that. It's called startmyweeklyemail.com. Gotcha, okay, putting that in the chat. Okay, Ricky, thank you so, so much for your time this morning. It's been a pleasure as always to have you in it. We're so grateful. Hey, the pleasure is all mine, guys. Thank you so much. And I hope you got something out of it and you can take back to your business and really crush it. Let me know if there's anything I can ever do to help any of you. Just reach out on Workplace is a good place to try to catch me or Instagram, of course. So, I appreciate, I'm honored that you guys would have me.