 I believe very strongly in recharging and taking some time for yourself to really, you know, let everything digest, let all the dust settle for a second. You've been working really hard, but a bing, but a boom. I want you to know that this is my life. This is real. Relationships are universal. What's up everybody? Ricky Krooth here. Welcome back to my channel. So today I want to talk about how I actually take vacations as a single real estate agent. When I made that video earlier this year about single agent versus real estate team, of course I am a single agent. That's just how I operate and you know, there's plenty of people that are super highly successful being a team leader of course. So but that's just not me. You have to kind of do what's best for you and what you feel like, you know, is the most efficient. And so that's just how I roll. I kind of, you know, I've kind of built out as far as employees go on my real estate coaching business. So I'm kind of doing it a different way as far as that goes. But today I want to talk about how do I take vacations as a single real estate agent because that was one thing. A lot of there was a lot of comments about, you know, how do you spend time with your family? How do you go on vacation and all this stuff? And my response was, well, I've been on four weeks worth of vacations in the past year and I travel all around the world and speak and I'm still able to produce the same or higher results year after year after year in my real estate business. So I think I figured it out. I think I'm good there. You see, I think that's one of the big myths about real estate single agents versus team. A lot of agents think that you have to have a team to take a vacation or to have a life and it's just simply not true whatsoever. I am a prime example of the fact that you absolutely don't have to have a team to enjoy life because I enjoy life to the fullest, to have a life because I have a life to the fullest and to take vacations, which I do whenever I want. So I think in the beginning of your real estate career, it doesn't matter if you're a team or, you know, or a single agent. Maybe you're a single agent with hopes of becoming a team leader, but you're still going to be a single agent in the beginning unless you're on a team, which if you're on a team, that's a totally different ball game. You're definitely good if you're on a team because you have a role, you do your job and if you take vacations, then there's plenty of people on the team to handle everything. So that's a whole totally different ball game. But if you're, if you're going to, you know, be a team leader, if you're going to be a leader period, chances are that you're probably going to start as a single agent or if you start out on a team, then chances are you're just there to learn enough to then become a single agent so that you can learn more as a single agent to where you can actually start building a team because you have to have the knowledge of how the business actually works to build a team. You can't just jump in the business and put a team together, but a bang, but a boom, start crushing it. I believe very strongly that you have to be a single agent for quite a while to where you can learn the ins and outs of the business before you can start hiring people because you really don't know what to train them to do. If you've never done these tasks, if you've never been in these situations, if you don't have these experiences under your belt. So I think in the beginning of your career, there's not going to be a whole lot of vacations anyway because you're putting all your time into trying to make this real estate thing work. Now when I first started in my career, I did take, I believe one vacation a year. I went skiing, I went to some islands, I did some different things, but it was just once a year that I did this and I did it as a way to recharge. I believe very strongly in recharging and taking some time for yourself to really, you know, let everything digest, let all the dust settle for a second. You've been working really hard, you know, you're kind of burnt out, if you will, and you just need this time to recharge. I'm a big component of that. So I did that in the beginning of my career. Now that fast forwarding it to now, we've been on, we do probably two vacations a year as a family, and then I also went to Brazil earlier this year for a week, also went to Vegas earlier this year for a week. So that's four weeks in the last year that I've taken off from real estate to go to travel somewhere for a week. So as you're a single agent at the beginning of your career, you're going to build your business, build your business, build your business until you get to the point where you need an assistant. So that's step one, is you're going to put an assistant in place. Okay? As far as other little intricate parts of my business, okay, I have a mortgage broker that I've been doing business with for over 10 years. He is my ace in the hole. When he says he can get it done, it's as good as cash. Right? I told him that one time, I said, you know, I might as well just mark that cash box on the contract, so whenever you tell me that this is going to work, because he's never let me down. If there's a problem, then he tells me up front, this is going to be an obstacle. I think I can get through it. Or if he tells me it's good, it's good. So it's always good. How did I find this person? Well, I went through several of them that didn't work out. And finally, I used this gentleman and it worked out big time. So I just continued to use them and it's been great ever since. Same thing with the title company. I've used the same title company for over 10 years. And they are part of my team, if you will. They help me get the deals done. They help me with my clients. They help me with a lot of stuff, processing the deals, helping me with the lenders, pushing people to do this, putting fire under people, and so on and so forth. Scheduling the closings, making it all happen. They're a big, intricate part of all that. So I don't have a real estate team in terms of agents underneath me, but I do have team members as far as maybe vendors, I'll call them. Title companies, mortgage guys, inspectors. I have an inspector that I've used for, I probably used this inspector for maybe five years now. And he's just the best one that I found in my area. And if I need him, boom, Johnny on the spot makes it happen. Does a really good job and everybody ends up happy. So that's a big thing is having all these people in place. I also have a professional photographer. Anytime I get a listing, boom, I call my photographer, boom, he's in there, he shoots it, he gets me the pictures back in 24 hours, it goes on MLS. So these are all things that could be done without me actually being there physically, okay? And also with the way that technology has ramped up over the last five to 10 years, there's so many things there that helps me in terms of not being somewhere physically, electronic signatures. I mean, when I started in real estate, if someone wasn't there, if they were in another town or state, we would have to fax them the contract, they would get it, they would sign it, they would fax it back. It was a very grueling process. Even then, even then at that time, it was still kind of a grueling process, but looking back on it, it was extremely grueling because now you literally just click, click, click, there's nothing to print, they get it in their email, they sign it in a matter of seconds, and it's right back to you to where you can submit that offer. Now let's talk about the question that a lot of you are probably thinking right now. Ricky, how do you deal with people that want to see property? How do you deal with people that want to list property, have a meeting with you to list their property or go around and look at houses? How do you handle those situations? So what I do is, is I've always got access with my phone no matter where I'm at in the world. Am I checking it all the time? No, but once or twice a day, I'm gonna check it to see if anything's happening. If there's anybody I need to call back, if there's any emails, if there's anything going on that I need to deal with, then I'm gonna deal with it. So if there's someone who wants to see a property or have a listing appointment, this has happened many times while I'm out of town. Plan A is for me to push that meeting back to when I get back in town. I'll tell them, I'll be honest with them. Hey, I'm here right now and I'll be back this day. Why don't we meet that day or the next day? And 90% of the time, they are A-okay with that. Nothing wrong in the world with that. They totally understand. I've built my brand with them, they're okay with it. For the 10% who are not okay with it, they're ready to do something now. It's an urgent situation, they need to move. What I'm gonna do is, is I'm gonna have an agent in my office, it's very simple. I don't have to have a team to do this. You can have an agent in your office kind of on standby for you in case somebody needs to see property or wants to list a property. You can have an agent that you trust that you know is a good agent and they can kind of be your backup plan and they can just pay your referral on those deals. It's something that you'll have to deal with. It's kind of hard to say, well, if I was there, then I would have made all that money but now all I'm getting is a referral. Well, you know that going into your vacation and that's just part of it. You have to be okay with that. So that's just part of the game. But that's how I handle that and sometimes I have paid referrals when I didn't necessarily want to but hey, I had a really good time on the vacation. I came back really recharged, I was ready for action when I got back and I came back and I killed it. So you just kind of just let that water go into the bridge and keep moving. It's the same thing if you had a team because if they handle it, your split is whatever. You're not getting the whole split with a team member so it's maybe not exactly the same thing but it is the same thing and you can also negotiate referral fees. You know, you can say, I want to do anything I give you while I'm gone, it's going to be 50-50. I mean, you can do that. It's negotiable. You can also, instead of hiring a buyer's agent, this is totally off the subject but if you're wanting to build a team because you want a buyer's agent, you don't have to have a buyer's agent on your team that you're babysitting and training and helping and trying to get them going in the right direction. It really sucks all your time away from your sales like I talked about in the single agent versus team video. What you can do is is you can just have a really good buyer's agent in your market. It could be with your company. It doesn't have to be with their company. You can say, look, every once in a while I want to get over where I'm a buyer so if I have a buyer that I just can't handle or don't want to handle, I'm going to give them to you, you know? So you don't have to have a team and have a buyer's agent, you know, per se. You can just kind of send buyers that, you know or when you get overwhelmed to this agent that you have in place. So there's a lot of myths out there about, you know that you have to have a team in order to do these things. And it's just simply not true. You can still have freedoms and you can still do what you want to do and you can still really kind of have the same setup as a team without even having a team. So I hope this video helped you. It's just to give you a different perspective. That's all it is. I'm not saying it's the best way, the right way, the wrong way. I'm just saying it's how I do it and that's what I'm here for. Just to share with you how I'm doing things that way you can take bits and pieces of it and run with it. You can tell me that it's not going to work at all, Ricky and that's just BS or you can take it and just completely use it to its fullest. Shoot me a comment. Let me know what you think about this. I would love to hear your perspective. Hit the like button if you would. Subscribe, hit the bell, all that good stuff. Let me know what videos you want me to make in the future. I'll see you tomorrow. Let's go.