 This goes to show you how much of an impact you can make on somebody. You can make videos and get, you know, found online. You could be anywhere. The goal is to help, you know, connect a buyer and seller. Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for Ricky! Garoo! He is an investor, a speaker, and soon to be remembered, in my opinion, as a legend in the industry. In the past month, let's just say, I finally figured out YouTube. I'm just not getting into a place where I feel like, okay, I think I understand how to grow on Instagram and YouTube. Is anyone bringing this to their attention the same way you are? Are they making the same points? Oh my gosh, these people don't even understand how this works. Representing all these buyers and sellers to pay for your life. They have no guarantee of how long it's going to take until they get it. Your experience of creating content is different. You're just different. You're different all around. You post and you learn. Okay, on another episode of Soothing Semantics, I'm your host, Rafi Pinsky. Make sure to subscribe, like, share, leave your comments. I'm gonna be looking into this camera. For all of your real estate needs in South Florida, make sure to follow Rafi The Realtor on Instagram. Sent up to my weekly newsletter credit to Ricky Karuth, who we have on the show today for all of your real estate needs. So, without further ado, Ricky Karuth. What's up, man? How you doing, bro? Good, bro. It's really nice to finally meet you. Yeah. Yeah, we got over here in Miami a couple days ago. Flew in, went to the Sequerium. Sequerium yesterday. Well, Miami's the only place you can go somewhere. Takes 30 minutes. Takes an hour and a half to go right back where you were. It's great, right? What's up? Yeah, it was wild, so we were late to dinner and stuff. But yeah, man, we got a big event. We got 700 agents registered for this event. We're actually shooting this inside the room where the event's gonna be later today, and I'm excited. I'm excited too, man. It's been a good two years in change since I started following you. Uh-huh. So, haven't met you yet. Finally, we get to meet. Yeah. And I've just been implementing a lot of the things you've been talking about, the weekly email. And it's funny because I would have, you wouldn't think you'd have such a powerful agent in Alabama of all things, because I'm a New Yorker originally. And when you're from New York, do you think that everything revolves around New York? Yeah. And so when you have someone in a state that's not as popular, but you're doing business at the level you are, it goes to show you that the hard work can be done anywhere. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I almost see it as an advantage because we don't have 10, $20 million homes, and you know, I don't know, man. It's, what the way the internet is today, I mean, you could literally be anywhere and really make an impact on people. This goes to show you how much of an impact you can make on somebody, regardless of where you are. I mean, it used to be you had to go to Hollywood to, you know, to try to try out, to do, you know, go and, you know, try to be a movie star or whatever. Now, you know, you can make videos and get, you know, found online, and you could be anywhere. Yeah, that's great. So that's what's really cool, man, is internet made the world a smaller place. I mean, back in the day, it might have, it would have been impossible, honestly, for somebody from New York to hear what this guy in Alabama is doing and, you know, be inspired by, you know, the strategies and implement, like it, I mean, it would have pretty much not happened at all unless the Alabama age, it became like a speaker and like, you know, ended up being on a stage or you know what I mean? Like without social media, you know, I wouldn't be able to make the impact that I have because like when I got into the coaching side, I was still selling, you know, and I sold like five years as I was building the coaching brand. I wouldn't have been able to do that without social media where I'm selling and building the brand, you know, cause like I could every day work on the brand by making videos and still sell real estate, you know, versus back in the day, you didn't have the option to make videos and post them online, so I'd have to, I would have had to like do a lot of traveling and speaking and write a book, you know what I mean? Like it was, that's the world we live in now. It's crazy. You know, yeah, there's just so much opportunity. But it's so crazy that so many people don't implement it. And it's not even just older people cause you know how it is older people like, oh, I don't want to do it. I don't want to be on video, yada, yada, but even I'm 29, people in their 20s don't want to do it at all. Well, there's the thing that people, it's almost like they don't want to make calls either, right? So they don't want to make calls. They don't want to do videos. It's all kind of the same thing. But what people need to understand is that it's not just about being on video, right? You get a video where you're not in the video of houses where you're talking over the video or music over the video. You can do written work, you can write blogs. You can do a podcast where you're not even on video pictures, the list goes on and on and on for things that you can do on social media to build your brand without even showing your face. So I don't know. It's kind of like, I don't want to be on video so they don't do social media at all. So if you're giving up before you're not even like looking for a solution, you know, what I found the true winners in the world do is they, you know, they don't like, they see most people, you know, look at things like their roadblocks. When the winners in the world see them as just slight road bumps, right? They just kind of, it was like when I started with the weekly email, I didn't have business cards. I didn't have a website. You know, nowadays, like people won't even like make a call unless they have a business card that their business card is made, right? Or their website perfect and all this stuff. It's like, I didn't have any of that. I just went. Cause the goal is to help, you know, connect a buyer and a seller. I mean, I wasn't worried about, you know, that was just bonus stuff. If I had business cards and websites and stuff like that. So yeah, it's the age old thing, man. People just let anything stop them in their tracks. You know, oh, you know, this is, this isn't going to work or whatever. Can't do that. And they just don't do it. Or if they're, I'm scared to make calls. So I'm just not going to do it. Not even going to try. It's like, no, just give it a try. You know, just saying they have a social. Just start creating. Dude, I've been doing social for six years now. And like literally, like literally, like in the past month, let's just say, I've finally figured out YouTube. Right? That's the moment. Yeah. In the last 30 days. Okay. Right. I've been doing it for six years. I'm about to hit a hundred thousand. So I noticed that. All right. Congrats. Yeah. But like in the last 30 days, I'm just now figuring out how to do YouTube. In what sense? What didn't you know? How to create content people would watch. How to make a thumbnail appealing, how to, what subjects to talk about, how to write the titles, and what the demeanor and what the flow of the videos need to be to retain watchers. Well, I think it's mostly the, ooh, you know, well, that's Instagram, right? So that's Instagram. And those do really well. The green screen article, those are my biggest watched videos on Instagram. But it's, I figured out a little hack there, right? Who's like finding an intriguing article. They're gonna read the headline, and they're like, oh, what does Ricky have to say about this? As I'm saying, ooh. So they're like really like, okay, what the hell's fixin' to happen? And then I break down some, you know, great data they probably didn't think about, or whatever my opinions are. You know, that's a little hack. Same thing with Instagram stories. I realized that if I erased all yesterday's stories and started to refresh, wrote like a paragraph on a story where people had to put their thumb on it to stop the story to read it, then Instagram would fire it through the algorithm, right? And then if I could add something at the end where it makes some DME too, where if they put their thumb on it, they're spending time on that piece of action story, and then they're DMing me, then Instagram's like, oh, and Instagram blows it up. So my Instagram story views went from 2,000 to 20,000 or 25,000, like that. Just realizing that that's a hack. So same thing with YouTube. Like, and like, I'm just figuring all this stuff out after six years of literally posting every day on every platform, and I'm just getting to a place where I feel like I kinda know what I'm doing to a point where I feel like I can actually grow. You know what I mean? So that's what that's what's interesting is that a lot of people are scared to do social and all this, and I'm six years in and posting every day, and I'm just not getting to a place where I feel like, okay, I think I understand how to grow on Instagram and YouTube. Most people would never have the fortitude to go 60. I think that's really the biggest issue is they're afraid of the judgment and they have no guarantee how long it's gonna take until they get it. You know, I've been doing the podcast for three years, man. You know, I've been posting weekly episodes more or less nonstop for three years. You know, and there's a lot of things I'm getting. There are things I still, you know, need time to learn. But it's like, I just know that these things are so valuable. It's crazy. Well, you know, I posted content for six years that I feel like suck. You know, the content sucks. I feel like it sucks. I feel like a lot, you know, 99% of the content I've posted over the last six years sucks. You know, you look back at it and I'm like, damn, that sucks. In one way, boring, like what? Yeah, just not interesting, not good editing, not good hooks, you know, the whole nine yards. Right, just bad content. You have more enthusiasm, a lot more. I remember in the earlier videos, it was a lot more monotone and suddenly you started to become a lot more bubbly. Well, I think at the beginning I was bubbly. I think that then I went kind of, you know, monotone. You go through waves, like you reinvent yourself. You know, you're a different personal social media, I say, every six months I say, you're a different person. You're putting out different content. Your tone's different, your mannerisms are different. You know, your knowledge is different. Your experience of creating content is different. You're just different. You're different all around. Every six months you're basically reinventing yourself on social. So yeah, I mean, if you go back to older videos and stuff and now I'll look back at the videos I'm doing now and be like, I think I'll look back at the videos I'm making right this second and be like, those are okay. Because the videos I'm gonna make next year are gonna be better. And so the videos I'm making now, I'm like, I'm gonna look back. See the videos I made in the past, I'm like, those suck. The videos I'm making now, I think I'll look back in a year or two and say those were okay. And the videos I'm gonna make in a couple of years I think will be good, not great. And so I'm gonna be working towards trying to make great videos, which won't happen for another three to five or more. Okay, well, it's also, it's good that you have, it's good that you kind of have the ability to do it even if you're not perfectly happy with it. I think that's the key. You have to. And part of it too is like the content I say sucks back on the day. I liked it when I posted it. You know what I mean? So that's part of it is like, you don't know. So you post and you learn. 100%. I do wanna, I wanna talk about this whole thing with Nardo. What do you think it's gonna be? I mean, for people who don't know just to, just to kind of be quick with it. You know, there was this lawsuit where it was in Missouri, Kansas City, I'm pretty sure, right? And long story short, the sellers ended up paying, well, this is standard, but the sellers paid the buyer's agents and the buyer, the buyer's agent negotiated about $10,000 less on the price. And so they felt, why should we pay an agent who's working against us? So now there's this whole long suit and, you know, now, people don't do it. Well, basically what it is, is that it's not even about an incident, right? It's about the general way that the industry operates in terms of the listing agent negotiates a commission. And then out of what they negotiate that commission with the seller, they basically, the buyer agent gets a portion of that when they bring a buyer to the table that they're representing. And what this group of sellers are saying is, hey, we shouldn't have to pay that out of the purchase price, right? And to me, it's kind of like, well, number one, you agree to all this. Number two, it's the same thing to me as a subcontractor, like, you know, a roofer comes and bids your job, say for $15,000, and then they pay a subcontractor $12,000 to actually do the work, right? They pocket $3,000. It's almost the same thing, you know? Like, we negotiated to sell your property for five or six percent. What do you care what I do with the money, right? I'm using the money to entice all the agents in the area and give them the incentive to bring us a buyer. And so a group of sellers saying, we shouldn't have to pay that, we want our money back, right? It's a refund lawsuit. They want their money back. The sellers want their money back. There's about 250 plus thousand transactions during the period of time that's under trial right now. And you've got the CEOs of Remax and Keller Williams and Home Services of America, Caldwell Baker, Got Deposition, and many, many others, right? And I've been following it every day. It's a three-week trial that started this week. And the way that I actually view the whole thing is that it's a group of owners that don't understand how the business works. If you take, and what they're trying to do is make it to where it's illegal to pay the buyer agent out of the listing side commission, where it's viewed as a kickback, where the buyer agent commission can't be on the HUD, you can't pay the buyer agent at all out of the deal anywhere. And so the buyer will have to pay their own agent, which will completely flip the industry upside down, which in turn will create a lot of opportunity for the opportunist out there. We'll also lose a lot of agents and the commission pool will be reduced dramatically, 30, 40, 50%. But there was a study that agents steer clients away from lower buyer commission offered properties, offered listings, right, for sale. I've never steered anybody. I don't know anybody that has, but I guess it happens, right? There was a survey in M&D where it's about 50-50. People think they steer, people don't think they steer 50-50. But there was a study where the lower the buyer agent commission offered the longer the property set on the market. When that commission got below 2%, 75% of the properties that offered less than 2% didn't sell, right? And so it's like, if that's the case and you're trying to take buyer commission totally out of the equation, you're hurting yourself, seller, by not offering an incentive for the thousands of agents in your area to bring you a buyer. There's not really gonna be many buyer agents, honestly. And a lot of the buyers who don't wanna pay an agent out of their own pocket are gonna kind of fin for their self, not be represented. It's gonna be a mess, right? You're just, you're really gonna screw up the whole thing right now. It's running like a well-oiled machine. Is anyone bringing this to their attention the same way you are? Are they making these same points? Who, bringing it to who's attention? To whoever has to deal, whoever is finalizing this case. Not really, you know, I've been reading and I've been covering this every day on my YouTube. Every day in court, I've been going through the notes and explaining everything to everybody and giving my thoughts and stuff. And from what I can tell, the notes I hear, it makes me think, man, what are these lawyers on the defendant's side? NAR is in the suit, NAR, Kella Williams' remix, all these companies. It's like, I hear, I mean, I'm reading the notes and I'm thinking, I need to fire these lawyers. What is going on? You know what I mean? It's insane that we heard from two of the plaintiffs who are the property owners that are in on the class action that are asking for their money back. We heard from two of those so far. Well, actually four of those so far, we've got notes on two of them. And when you read it, it's like, oh my gosh, these people don't even understand how this works. One plaintiff's mom was an agent for 30 years, you know? And she's like, I'm doing this for her and I'm doing this for my kids because my kids are becoming to the age where they're gonna start buying homes and I'm thinking, you don't pay a commission when you buy, lady, number one. Do you wanna go back? And she said, I know my mom worked really, really hard for her clients and stuff. And I'm thinking, and she's like, she's like, I'm doing this for my kids. And I'm like, yeah, just like your mom did this for you by going out there and being an agent and making all this money, representing all these buyers and sellers to pay for your life. You're right, so you can be in that position. Yeah, you're gonna tell your mom to go refund all those buyer agent commissions back to those sellers, right? It's wild, man, like they don't get it. For sell by owners, on average, sold for like 30% less on their own than they would have with an agent. You know, that's like real stats. It's like, they wanna save 20, 30%, they wanna save 6%, you know, they're gonna lose 20, 30% to save 6%. You know what I mean? Like if you take all this out of the equation and you run it like the Wild Wild West and have buyers where they ever have to pay their own agent or not have one, it's gonna be a mess. It honestly is, and here's the thing. I think a lot of people know that, right? You know, I don't know what people are thinking, but like the plan is lawyer, for example, right? Michael Ketchmark, like, man, it's like, do you understand? Like I don't think you understand the industry. And what I really feel like it is is you got a group of owners that don't understand how it works and how beneficial the current system is. And they went to a lawyer, not understanding how it works, saying this is unfair practice, right? And so then the lawyer says, oh, we got a case here against these corporations that are worth billions. And so I believe it's a typical lawyer situation where it's like, let's go make this big case and let's go after all these people for all these millions, these companies for all these millions. So now you've got, I believe, owners that understand how it works and how great the current model is with paying by our agents out of the listing agent commission, a lawyer who looks at that and says, let's go make some money. And in order to make the money, you're gonna have to change how we operate in the industry. So for me, I look at it, I'm thinking, he's taking advantage of the property owners that don't understand the way the industry works. And he himself probably doesn't understand how it works and how beneficial the current system is, right, but they got dollar signs in their eyes. I believe that, I believe it's just like, maybe they believe deep down the heart, this is unfair practice, but if they understood that it's not unfair practice, all this is negotiable. Like the lady that went on the stand, that her mom was an agent, she was like, the buyer agent got 20% of my equity, right? Like some say she bought it for 100, sold it for 150, for example, and she got 10,000, 20% of her above what she paid for. That's what I'm guessing she was talking about. And then you add the other buyer agent, I mean, the listing agent commission in there, it's 40%, right? 20 and 20 is 40. And she's like, I was so sad when I realized we're gonna get so little or something like that. And I was thinking number one, like you don't have to use an agent. Right. You can sell it on your own. You can also negotiate the commission. You can also go to a discount brokerage, right? There's a lot of different options. Like you don't have to use an agent. It's not mandatory, right? And all of this is negotiable. That's what's wild about this whole thing. So we'll see how it all goes up. Where do you think it's gonna go? Do you think it's gonna go in the favor of that one really or do you think it's gonna go? Well, an analyst group says it's a 50-50 on this trial. But what's interesting is there's another trial early next year, the Mora case. And it's the exact same case. It's gonna be in Illinois. And it's gonna be early next year. I don't know exactly when, probably Q1. And they say that's a 75% chance of the plaintiffs winning and this whole thing getting flipped on its head. But the thing is, is that if the plaintiffs win either one of those cases, the defendants will appeal. They're gonna appeal it. And it'll go through the appeal process which drags everything out for years. It's gonna be drug out. And then if in fact it's gonna become a law where a buyer agent commission is viewed almost like a kickback and it cannot be on the HUD, you cannot pay them out of the listing side commission legally, then that has to go through a big process. You know what I mean? It's gonna make it to where it's actually a rule and actually a law. So like if this in fact does go down, it would take a lot in my opinion like five, 10 years to actually make it to where we had to start operating under these new rules or whatever. So it's gonna be so telegraphed. You're gonna have plenty of time to realize or to figure out how to deal with it in your business. But it's gonna be so much opportunity because I mean, number one, you're gonna have like these buyer agents that emerge who specialize in only buyers, right? People that are like, they advertise like I only work with buyers or do not work with sellers. I'm a buyer specialist. And they're gonna be like operating like a lawyer in my opinion, you know, where they take a big retainer up front. They're gonna have big clients, clients that want representation that are doing these big deals. And there's gonna be a big market for buyer agents, right? You're gonna have the split, it's gonna be very interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you'll have people that work buyers and sellers, of course, but then you're gonna have a lot of buyers who just don't have the money or just elect not to pay. They're probably gonna try to avoid doing it, especially in the middle market. Yeah, yeah. In the lower end market and stuff like that where people can barely come up with a down payment and all this stuff. There may be like financing products that come out that include the buyer agent commission into the loan, which I get now, the property's gonna have to appraise. So now you're still getting the 3% or whatever it is out of the appraise value, which we're doing now, right back where we were. If a buyer agent isn't included, it's not like the seller's gonna take 3% less than appraise value because the buyer agent is involved, they're still gonna get the maximum amount. This isn't gonna change prices. You know, the whole thing is actually a mess. You know, the current model is the best model. I think maybe what the best solution is, is to have better disclosure to the buyers and sellers about how it works, right? I think that there should be just better disclosure. That's really what should happen at the end of the day. You should leave it like it is and just have better disclosure to the consumers. You know, disclosure documents and explain, you know, actually explain how this thing works and the fact that it is negotiable and so on and so forth, it's crazy. It's so crazy. I mean, what do you think is gonna happen though? I think either way though, listing agents are gonna be key. Well, for the listing agents, if this were to go down like this, it's probably gonna reduce their commission of 3%. Okay, so you're gonna list them for 3% and even two in some markets, all right? So two or 3%. And then you're gonna be doing double the work a lot of times because the buyers are gonna come straight to you. Right. So now you gotta deal with the buyers showing on the property. You're gonna have to have a buyer agent or a show-in agent or something that's handling all that, you know, and probably multiple of them. If you got a bunch of listings, you have to pay those agents something, right? So you're gonna have to be dealing with the buyers, looking at properties, when they bring the offer, you're gonna have to be probably handling all that as well if they're not gonna pay their own agent or have a lawyer, draw up stuff. Definitely more work for the listing agent. Yeah, so you're looking at the listing agent doing twice the work, dealing with two parties instead of one for half the money. Because normally when you work both sides, you get the full 5% or 6% what it was agreed to. It's like, you get the full commission, that's what they are hiring. That's the price that they're willing to pay you to sell the property. You know, what do you care what I do with the money? You know, I'm using it to incentivize, basically look at it as marketing. You know, I'm incentivizing all the agents to sell the property. When you take that away, you don't have a bunch of other agents out there working to try to find the buyer. It's definitely gonna create less if an incentive for agents to do the job at the highest level, it's just what it is. Yeah, it's gonna, if it goes through, it'll change a lot of stuff, but I mean, I don't, you know, we'll lose a lot of agents. That's equal to two. The industry will crush a lot of agents right out of the business. We already lose agents just because interest rates went up. I mean, could you imagine if buyer agent commissions went away, it would just, we would lose half the agents in the industry, I believe. And, but it would still be an amazing career, an amazing industry to be in, extremely lucrative and a great platform to, you know, to become a millionaire and leverage into other, you know, other verticals. Absolutely, absolutely. I'm gonna keep in touch. I mean, I'm gonna continue to follow you as always and just get your insights and everything. I would have loved to, I think, we probably have to get ready for this, right? So let's wrap this up. Yeah, I didn't even fully introduce you, but if you don't know who Ricky Caruth is, make sure to follow him on Instagram and YouTube. I already know you so well. It just didn't even occur to me. I just went right into the episode. So guys, thank you for watching another episode of Soothing Semantics. I hope you enjoyed. There's so much more information that you can check out on Ricky's channels. And, obviously, for all of your South Florida real estate needs, make sure to check out Rafi the Realtor, sign up for the weekly newsletter. Also, make sure to go on to YouTube and look up Ricky Caruth Weekly Newsletter because this is something he emphasizes all day long. It has really, really helped my business. I highly, highly, highly, I don't even highly suggest it's an understatement. You need to get a weekly email set up on your business. Make sure to like, subscribe, and share. Ricky, thanks again for coming. Thank you, bro. Appreciate it. Cool. Until next time.