 Can you imagine a world where we don't advertise buyer agent commissions on MLS? All right. That's where we're headed. That's what's on the table in this NAR settlement. That's the foundation. That's what the DOJ wants. The, the decoupling of commissions where the seller negotiates their commission, the buyer negotiates their commission. Now they're not saying that seller can't pay the commission. They just saying that you can't advertise it on MLS. You can advertise it on MLS through saying seller will, will offer concessions. All right. And they're not saying that the buyer can't ask for it when they make an offer on the property. They're just saying they do not want this negotiated between the, the, the listing agent and the seller. They don't want the buyer agent commissions negotiated between the, with the listing agent and the seller. They want the buyer to negotiate their own commissions for their own agent who is negotiating against the seller. Hey, listen, whatever, um, you know, a lot of people are like, Ricky, you know, you, you change your, why are you so happy about this? If you're saying that, that means that you're looking at this half glass, half empty. This is a glass half full situation. You should be excited about this. I'm going to talk today in this video about the two reasons why this is a great thing for you and your business. I'm also going to talk about the two skills that you need to go all in on developing. If you want your business to explode out of this, things like this only happen every 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, something that comes along that changes, completely changes the industry from inside out. Whereas the way that we do business will never be the same. I'm doing a zoom call today, an emergency zoom call today, five PM Eastern. I'll put a link in the description of how to get to the zoom link, or you can go to zero to diamond.com, create a free account. This is a free zoom for everyone. Create a free account and it'll be right there at the top, emergency NAR settlement zoom call. That's today, five PM Eastern. As you know, Zoom's only hold 1,000 people. This will cap out. So get there early. We're going to be talking about the future of the industry, getting people's feedback, comments, questions, et cetera. All right? So let me dive in here. A lot of people are saying, Oh my God, this is going to be like the Wild, Wild West. This is going to be like the Wild, Wild West. Whereas buyers have to pay their own commission. And I submit to you that we have been in the Wild, Wild West. Whereas a buyer calls us and we just go, we just go to work. We go crazy going to work for that buyer without really even having a conversation about what the relationship is between the agent and the buyer. I think that is the Wild, Wild West. I think we're moving into a place where your business is going to be more efficient, whereas now you're going to sit down with a buyer and you're going to have a conversation about what their needs are rather than just saying, Oh, you want a house? Let me see some houses. Go show some house. Let me go show you all these houses. And let's make an offer. It's going to deal done instead of approaching it like that. You're actually going to sit down and talk about what the buyer actually needs, what their desires are, what their timeframe is, what they're thinking about doing, why they're doing this, why they're even thinking about buying a house. And in which case a relationship, a business agency relationship will be put in place in writing that lays out exactly what your value proposition is, what you're going to do for the buyer and what they're going to compensate you. I think that that is far from the Wild, Wild West. I think we're moving into a more efficient business model for agents. Now I have to see this positively. I have to look at this with an optimistic tone. And as you can see from the video I did last week, which blew up by the way, there's a thousand comments, you know, I read through as many of them as I could. Thank you all for watching, for commenting, for giving your opinions on this subject, on this massive change moving forward. Let me know in this video what you think about this because you guys have had the weekend to digest this now. You know, what are your thoughts now? Okay, this is going to become a reality really quick. Now I've been saying it for a while that this is what's going to happen and it's going to happen mid-year. Here we are. It's happening mid-year. Now, in my opinion, this is going to make your business much more efficient. Think about it. You're not going to be showing all kinds of buyers all over the place. You're going to work with buyers who have hired you to work with them. I don't think that's a bad thing, right? I don't think that's a bad thing. Now a lot of people are saying, well, buyers can't afford, you know, to pay their own commissions. We don't know what the implications are of this. We don't know what the reality is. Some agents are out there saying, I'm going to continue to charge 5%, 6%. Okay? Maybe that continues. Maybe everything's status quo and the way that we document it changes. Maybe everybody continues to charge the same amount and everything continues like it is and it's just documented differently. It's to close differently. You know, maybe it's on the HUD settlement statement differently. I don't know. Nobody knows how this is all going to play out. I can give you my opinion. My opinion is that agents that give full service that are great agents are going to go out there. They're going to take listings at 2% and 3% and they're going to give full service. You're going to be up against those agents. You're going to say, oh, I charge 4%, 5%, 6%, whatever. And they're going to say, wait a minute, my neighbor, they sold their house with a great agent. The agent charged them 2.5%. It went great. They got what they wanted. It was a smooth transaction and they had nothing but good things to say about the agent that they gave a great testimonial for the agent. And guess what? They're going to say, I love you. I love you. I love you to death. But I'm going to go with this other agent if you can't do it for 2.5%. Right? I'm going to go with this other agent. Right? This other agent was able to make the buyer pay for their own commission. The other agent was able to get the job done in a very efficient, smooth manner without me having to pay for the buyer agent commission. So, unless you are willing to take that deal, I'm going to have to go try this other agent that had great results with my neighbor. That's what we're, in my opinion, in my opinion, that's what I believe that we're going to be up against, where we do enter into a world where we will negotiate the commissions that the buyer is going to pay with the buyer. And again, they're not saying that we can't put the commission in the offer and ask the seller to pay for some or all of the buyer agent commission. They're not saying that you literally can't advertise it. They're just not going to be a field for it and you have to call it concessions. You know, I don't believe you're going to be able to say buyer agent commission. You know, seller will, you know, will throw in 5,000 towards buyer agent, you know? I mean, towards buyer closing costs, prepays, whatever. That's going to go towards the buyer agent commission, whatever. You're still going to be able to do this. So, the fact that you can still do this, does that mean things will say the same? Oh, no. Let me know in the comments. Let me know what you think. One reason, I'm going to give you two reasons why I believe this is going to be a great thing for your business. I'm going to give you two skills that you need to go all in on developing if you really want to take advantage of the opportunity. So, let's dive right on to here. So, the first thing, okay? The first reason why I believe that this is a, this is so, this is such a great thing for you in your business is transformation. Let's face it. The reason why you're watching this video is because you want transformation in your business, in your life. You continue to do the same things over and over and over again. They're not getting you where you want to be. Maybe you're having these incremental increases in success in your business, but you're not finding any quantum leaps. You're looking for quantum leaps. You're looking for the needle to actually move to get to the place where you want to go. You want to get there faster. I believe that this change in the industry is going to spark a lot of transformation in you. And if you want to be the type of person who can create transformation in other people, AKA get your sellers to say yes to you to list their property with your choose you as their agents, then you're going to have to be a person of transformation. Ooh. Yeah. You're going to have to learn to transform and become that next best version of yourself. If you want other people around you and you want to attract the type of people who say yes to you. Yes. The reason why you're scared to ask for business, the reason why you say no, no, no, it's because you resist sales. You resist cold calls. You resist paying coaches. You resist everything. You're like, oh, that sales thing. That sales thing. Since you believe that, since you think like that, since that's your mentality, then that's the mentality you spew, not knowing it, to everyone around you. And now you create an environment where everybody says no. Why? Because you say no. You must transform into this next best version of yourself if you want other people to transform. Now, transformation takes many forms. But you've got, you know, and this is true for me. This is true for me. I, I, you know, you guys know me. I'm the hardest working guy. I'm the grindiest. I'm out here, you know, I grew up roofing houses. I, I, you know, worked in an Ulrich, served tables. I came out and, you know, we went, lost everything, came back, became one of the top agents in the industry, you know, then one of the most well-known coaches in the industry, how? Hard work, hard work. But getting me where I want to go, the things that I've done is not going to get me where I want to go. And I have to learn new things to, to, to do the things that I haven't done to get to the places where I want to go. And that's just real talk. And a lot of us are stuck just doing the same things over and over again. We're just beating our heads against the wall. We're that fly trying to get out the window. We keep trying to get out the window because we want to go outside. We want to get to the next level and we keep trying to, we keep trying to, we keep trying, but we don't get through the window. We'll never get through the window no matter how hard we try. Whereas if we just turn right around and we're right out the door that's open with minimal effort that we're spending right now, we would be out in the open air and we would go to that next level and we'd be able to go higher and higher and higher with not as much effort that we're expending. It's called working smarter, not harder, but I submit to you work smarter and harder, but we have to be open to change. And if you're fighting against this, if you're fighting against this settlement and you're thinking this is the beginning of the end, then you are the fly banging your, banging your wings against the window. I don't want you to do that. I want you to lean into this. I want you to realize that change is good change. Say it with me, change is good. And I'm going to take advantage of the opportunity because this is a massive opportunity, which brings me to the second reason why this is just, this is a great thing. And that is market share the opportunity for you to go out and acquire so much more market share than you have right now is ridiculous. Now I've been talking about this on stage for months and months and months how the next 12 months are the most important 12 months of your entire career to go out and, and expand your influence in the market. Why? Because the market is down when the market is down, that is the most opportunistic time to go out and meet new people, bring new people into your business, expand your influence, et cetera. And when the market rebounds, your business explodes. Okay. We, now that we have this NAR thing happening, this is like, this really is the opportunity of a lifetime to go out and acquire more market share. There's a couple of things I want to touch on. Number one, the fact that there's going to be a lot of agents that lay down over this, and I hate that. I hate that for them because this is one of the best opportunities they'll ever see and they don't even realize it. This is the biggest blessing in disguise you'll ever see in your life and they're laying down. They're, it's just human nature, right? It's human nature and they're reading headlines and they're getting scared, whatever. The fact is, is that as they lay down, they're leaving so much market share on the table for you to snack. So not only the market being down offers this opportunity to acquire more market share in the market, which what is market share? Market share is the amount of people in the market that know who you are, what you do, and that you're here to help. And the more people that know who you are, what you do and you're here to help, the bigger your business is for the rest of your life. And as long as you have systems in place where these people never forget who you are ever, where people 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago still remember you like they met you yesterday and they call you when they decided they want to buy or sell. That's when you, that's when you can compound these relationships into more relationships and more relationships. So by the way, relationships cannot be automated. People are calling, you know, they're saying AI, AI is going to come in. You can't automate this. Agents will always be around. Well, the way we do business change, absolutely. Will AI make things more efficient for us? Absolutely. Could AI put us in a position where we sell more properties and less time, which reduce commissions? Absolutely. I've said it, I've said this for over a decade that I believe something will happen in the industry that takes our commission from six to four, two and two on each side. I've been saying this for, for over a decade that I believe it'll eventually get to a two and two. Um, and now look, look at where we are. We could be in a situation where agents are literally giving great service for 2% on the listing side and then whatever happens on the buyer's side. Listen, we don't know and it doesn't matter. That's the whole point of this, but market share is there for the taken out. I want you to think about market share and I've talked about this so many times, but it's been a while since I brought it up. This is the market. It's vast. It's massive. Right. And I've always talked about the fact that closings happen every day, regardless of market conditions, forever. We're going to get a year. We're going to hit a year where we hit 7 million existing home sales within the next decade. This lawsuit interest rates inventory, none of this affects the fact that we're going to hit 7 million existing home sales at some point, some, some year, I don't know if it's your three, five, seven or eight that we hit 7 million existing home sales. That's happening. The only question is, is, are you going to be in the business? Are you going to adapt? And are you going to get out there and expand your influence between now and then so that you reap the benefits so that your business explodes and goes to that next level in three, four, five, six, seven Xs that year. That's what I'm most interested in. And that's why I'm doing this video. And that's why I'm doing the zoom call today because I want to help you guys continue to push through this through the adversity. Adversity just reveals the true character on the inside. That's all it does. I didn't do anything else. So who are you on the inside? Are you a person of growth? Are you a person that's going to keep fighting? You're a person that's going to continue to dream big and work hard. Are you going to lay down? You know, the answer only, you know the answer, but the market is massive. So I've always said, if the market comes down 30%, if the market comes down 20, 50%, 60%, even not your, your market is this and you are a microscopic piece of salt, your microscopic piece of dust in the market. You can't even see yourself in the market. Even the biggest teams out there, what's their market share in, in, in their MLS like 0.0, you know, 5%, it's not even 1%. I mean, if you hit 1% market share, you're like a beast, right? And so even the biggest teams, now think about your business. If you're a newer agent, if you're doing 20, 30, 40, 50 deals a year, you're literally nothing in the whole scheme of the market. All right. And if the market reduced 90%, that 10% that's left, you're still a microscopic diet and it's the opportunity is still limitless for you, unlimited. Okay. You can't talk to every single person in the market every single second of the day, even if you could talk to every person in the market over the course of your career, which you can't, it'll never happen. But even if you could, it wouldn't matter because people change their minds every five seconds. And you know that as a real estate agent, people change their minds every five seconds. You'd have to talk to everybody, every single person in the market, every five seconds to see if they changed their mind yet in order to take advantage of every single opportunity available to you in the market. You'll never do that in a million years. It's impossible. So therefore business is unlimited for each and every agent. And we'll continue to be so even if the market reduced 90%, I want you to understand this and go all in. Don't, don't, don't, don't step back, lean into it. You know, 90% down is still unlimited. So I want you to really, really understand this concept and not, not think scarcity here with the business is going to continue. The industry is going to continue to build, build, build, build, build. Now, if you're in one of these markets that's really small, there's like a bunch of agents and like not a whole lot of properties, which there's not a whole lot of markets like that. Hawaii's one of them. Hawaii is the worst I've ever seen in terms of the number of listings compared to the number of agents. Really tough market to get into. It's going to continue to be tough. Nothing's going to change. Right? What I'm trying to tell you, nothing is going to change here, but this gives you the opportunity to expand your market share, expand your influence in the market. And that's what you need to be focused on, which means coming back to the fundamentals of business, lead gen, lead conversion, a client retention and referrals. Right. And most agents are just not doing lead gen. Like you're scared to talk to the highest quality prospects who are property owners, so you spend way more money to get crappy buyer leads. It doesn't make any sense. And you got to understand why you're scared to make calls. That's because you don't like to get called. Get out of this mindset. Get out of this mindset and transforms the next best version of yourself that invites you, invite the type of people that will say yes to you because you're open minded yourself. If you're not open minded, you're not going to, when you talk to people, they're not going to be open minded. I hope this is clicking for you. Let's talk about the two skills, the two skills that you need to develop, that you need to work on. Number one is self development. Now, when you develop yourself, the next best version of yourself, that's something nobody's ever going to be able to take away from you. When you develop better sales skills, you need to develop the way you talk to people better. No one's ever going to be able to take that away from you. They could say, OK, something, let's just say like robots come along and take agents out of the game. OK, I'll go do anything else I want to. Why? Because I'm a person of influence. I understand all these things. Right. I've transformed into this next best version of myself over and over and over again to the point where I can go succeed in any industry, anything I want to do, you can take these skills with you anywhere. That's one thing that doesn't scare me at all about any of this is that I know that I can go do anything that I want to do based on the skill set that I developed being a real estate agent. It's like, go all in on being an agent. Like, what if agents don't exist in 10 years? Well, the skills that you develop to become an agent, you can use those same skills to go crush it in anything you want to do. You know, go all in on TikTok. What if TikTok gets banned by the US? The skills you develop on TikTok to build an audience you can take with you to any platform that you want to to go to build a new audience, right? It's the skill sets, guys. It's the skill sets around it. That's why we've got to go all in with understanding, expanding our influence, with understanding lead gen, with understanding conversion, with understanding retention. When you understand these things, this is business fundamentals 101. So with self development, we have to take a step back and we have to start doing what? Reading books. Back in 2008, I read 100 books. Then I haven't read a book since. It's been 10 years. Those 100 books got me where I am. Number one, one of the top realtors in the in the market. One of the top coaches in the industry. Those the knowledge on those 100 books got me where I am, but it's not going to get me where I want to be. I realized this several months back. I started reading again. So I read for about 30 minutes to an hour every day. I'm reading. And guess what? I feel so I was empty, but now I now I feel so full. I feel so full. I feel so alive. Why? Because I'm getting new ideas and I'm taking those ideas and I'm applying them to my life and my business. You'll the same thing will happen to you. You don't have to read books on real estate. You can read books on anything and apply the principles. It's the principles that you're looking for. And if you get one good thing out of a book, I was reading a book the other day. I was like, oh, I've heard all this stuff. I was like 70% through the book. And I was like, I've heard all this before. I was getting a few little nuggets here and there. Nothing really life changing. And all of a sudden, boom, that one thing hit me like a ton of bricks. And I was like, oh, my gosh, bingo. That's what I've been looking for right there. And that that's the way it happens. You've got to go all in with self development. And guess what? It's going to help you become a better communicator, which is the next skill set communication. When you're reading, you talk better. You articulate better. You're able to convey your message better. And you're able to help people understand what your value is better. And it's just little by little every day, little by little every day. The second skill set is communication. If you, the better you are at communicating, right? The first level of, of, you know, income is implement, implementation, implementation, doing the thing, right? Things your assistant does, putting things in MLS, you know, making the calls, doing the things, implementation, right? The next is unification, managerial, you know, team leader, broker owner, in this case, et cetera. The next level is communication, making money with your mouth, making people feel comfortable with you instantly. Is where you're going to make all your riches, where you're going to become incredibly wealthy is your mouth. Next level is ideas. And we're talking about imagination where you've got the Steve Jobs and the Elon Musk's of the world, right? They're, you know, you know, multi-multi-multi-hundred billionaires. But the fact is, is that communication, is that next level, is that next key. And when you talk to someone, making them feel comfortable with you instantly, like, like your family, like you've known each other forever, creating that great first impression, that's where all the money is. They don't choose you as an agent, as a listing agent because of your PowerPoint presentation or how you handle a little rejection. They pick you because they like the way you talk and they feel like working with you. They just like you. That is literally the reason. I don't try to force people to work with me. I tell people, I talk to people, I connect with people. I give them solutions for their problems. I'm, I'm, I'm all in on what their problems are. And then I help them find solutions. And then I work with them to fix their problems and to give them the solutions. Right? Here's what you want to do. Here's the game plan to get it done. Let's get to work. If they decide not to work with me, that is fine by me. That is, I know that I'm good at what I do. I know that I'm great at what I do. I know that I can help them through whatever it is. But if I didn't do a good enough job of conveying that message, that's okay, because we're not going to connect with everybody. That, that's what makes the world go around. That's why there's so many different agents. But the fact is, is I have to become a better communicator. Most agents get in the business and they want to work on how to get listings, you know, who to call, what to say, how to hand rejections, to get people to sign contracts. And that stuff is good to learn. Okay. But if you can't make some, that's step two, by the way, step one is, can you make them feel comfortable with you? Cause if you can't make them feel comfortable with you, we're not going to step two, which is the possible deal and converting. If we can't create an environment where they feel comfortable with enough with us to say yes to us, we're not going to get the yes. And we're just, most agents are just skipping over this part. When you develop this skill of communication, nobody can take it away from you. They can do anything they want to. Nobody can take this away from you. You can go use this in any, anything that you want to do. And you can make millions, tens of millions of it as a real estate agent. I've made tens of millions communicating as a real estate agent. So communication is the second skill I want you to go all in on. And that's going to all play together with transformation. With market share, with self development and communication. I'll see you guys on the zoom call today. I hope this video helped you. If you're worried about this, I hope this video helped change your perspective. You're one perspective away, one perspective away, one, one instant perspective away from changing your entire life and business and really having more clients and you can service. And that's what we all want. So I'll see you guys on the zoom call today and I'm excited. I'm excited about this. I'm going to continue to develop. I want you to continue to develop and we're all just going to continue to develop together. Let's get it. See you on the next video.