 Poll calling is not the common denominator because you can use social media to get people's contact information to then call them and have that real conversation. The whole year of 2007, I was working on an oil rig in Mississippi every other week. 2008, January or so, February, I got laid off from the oil rig as gas prices plummeted and the oil industry kind of got flipped upside down. I was kind of forced back into real estate, but I was already dabbling back into real estate. Between 2005 and 2008, I sold zero homes, but during that time, when I lost everything, I read about 100 books because I was so curious of why I failed. Now, I was going through this moment in my mid-20s when a lot of people were going through this same thing in their life in their mid-40s, 50s, and 60s. Guys right next to me were learning the same lessons I was learning in my mid-20s, losing everything, having to start over. So I knew I was really blessed to go through that moment and that I was going to learn a lot through that moment that was going to take me to places like where I am now. So in 2008, I got back in the business, and this is what I learned through all that. The main points was that, number one, the reason why I couldn't continue to sell real estate is because I was so focused on the transaction. If I would have been more focused on just helping people and actually building my business on what I can do to help people, I would have continued to sell property, but I was so focused on transactions that I really had no relationships when everything crashed, or I could have created new relationships at that time, but I didn't understand. Here's what's really scary. Not only 80% of the same amount of closings, but 80% of the same amount of deals that went under contract, pending deals. 80% of the same amount of pending deals happened during that 45-day period as did the same period the year prior. What does that mean? It means during the scariest moment, no human-to-human contact, complete uncertainty of what this thing was going to do, you still have buyers making offers, negotiating, sellers accepting, ratifying contracts, and putting a deal together set to close. 80% of a market that was already really incredible, in 2020, that 45-day period was a really good 45-day period. We have 80% of the same amount of things happening, not only closings, but pending deals. Open up your eyes, guys. This business is, you can have so much confidence in the business itself. There's really nothing to worry about. The only thing to worry about is, is are you going to wrap your head around what I'm saying, and are you going to commit? No social media, no buying leads, no nothing. Direct mail, none of that, just a weekly email. So I'm telling you guys, if the objective is, if you ask a buyer or seller at the end of a transaction, how did you pick your agent? The most common answer right now, after we've been through a couple of digital cycles where people were picking their agents online and had some bad experiences, the most common answer now, it swung back to, I had a friend in the business. So think about that really hard, okay? The object now becomes, how many friends in the market can we make? That's it, period, end of story. It's not about listing appointments or, you know, closings or, you know, conversions or, that's not it. It's how many friends can we make in the market? And to be the most efficient and effective, let's break that down. Who do we make friends with? Property owners who own the type of property we want to sell. It's real simple stuff guys. Cold calling is not the common denominator because you can use social media to get people's contact information to then call them and have that real conversation. So cold calling is not the common denominator. Direct mail is not the common denominator because there's other ways to get to the conversation. Door knocking is not, all these lead generation sources are not the common denominator. It all comes back to one thing, real conversation. And when you approach everyone like they are an extended part of your family and you give them that feeling that you're like a brother, cousin, mom, best friend from high school vibe, then now you've got something. Now you can create these friendships. When you walk into every scenario without expecting anything, let's just put it like that. When you have zero expectations of getting the listing or a buyer doing a deal, zero expectations, you're just there just to help them with whatever it is that they decide to do. That's when you're going to start really winning big. But it doesn't matter if there's five people, 50 people, 500, 5,000, 50,000. It still only takes you 30 minutes every week. So now what is that called? Scale up, build a tee. Now you can scale your business to the moon. And now it becomes a game of accumulation, accumulating. How many friends can we make? How much data can we collect to put into our database to get this weekly email to let them know who we really are, to then do business with them now or later or whatever. So if anybody can tell me, this is the question, out of all the lead generation sources, okay, because people are spending so much money just not to have to call someone, just to turn around and call someone. When you get a zilla lead, the first thing you got to do is call them. Facebook lead, you got to call them. You do an open house, you develop a list of people that came the next day, call them. It all comes back to calling people. So in my opinion, with me being the beast that I am, I'm like, well, I'm not going to do any of that stuff. I'm just going to call people because that's the end result anyway. Everybody says, you're doing 100 deals a year. They see that part, but they don't want to talk about the 100,000 calls, the 15 years, losing everything, doing the weekly email since 2007. They don't want to talk about all that stuff and everything it took to build up to this point. So this is what you have to think about as a new agent. You have to think that you guys as a new agent, you're making millions of dollars in your first year. Right? Because for me, it's not about what's on the tax return, what you don't see in your tax return, what you don't see in your tax return is the fact that you learn how to write a contract. That's worth a million dollars right there over the course of your career. You learn how to use MLS, right? You learn how to talk to people. Maybe you did four or five deals, which means what? You learn how a transaction works, like you learn the intricate details and the process of a transaction. How much is that worth? Nobody wants to even think about that. They just want to think about the 20 grand they made and they want to be disappointed about it. When you don't understand that you've built this foundation of knowledge, that's going to make you millions of dollars. If you go back to April last year during the complete U.S. economic shutdown and go to my YouTube, you'll see a video that says, we're about to have the largest real estate surge we've ever seen. I'm not saying I'm a fortune teller. I'm a genius. I can just read the writing on the wall. That was mid-April in the middle of the shutdown. What happened? May, when the economy opened, we had the largest real estate surge we've ever seen. Really, it's still happening. I'm not saying that I can predict the future and stuff. I'm just trying to help you guys because I've been through so many market cycles and losing everything and this, that and the other that I know how this thing works. I'm just trying to take what's in here and put it in there so you guys can be prepared and take advantage of. Hey, let's say I'm wrong. You still win. That's the thing. You can't lose. If you're building your name in the market, you're creating those friendships. You're building your brand with the weekly email. You can't lose. Doesn't matter what the market does. People want to know your opinions. They want to know what you think about the market. They want to know what you think about this restaurant or this article. They want to know what you think, your opinions. They don't want to know recipes. Like if I want to know how to cook shrimp etouffee, for example, I can just Google that. I don't need my real estate agent telling me a recipe to cook something. I don't want to know general real estate stats. You know, like national real estate stats. Don't care about that. I want to know local real estate stats. I don't know what's going on in my market. So just being very personable in your emails, making them very personable. That's a good word for it. But here's something for you. I started out and said I became the world's first completely free coach. I have a complete course. It's at zero to diamond.com. If you go to zero to diamond.com and go to the free course and go to the lesson that's called Ricky's Weekly Email. There's a full tutorial. There's email, weekly email ideas. And there's also a link that goes to every email I've sent out for like the last three years. You can look at the exact emails that I've sent to my clients for like the last three years. And I want you to literally take that template and take my exact, you know, exactly how I do it. I want you to copy it verbatim and just put your stuff in there. You know, you can look at the different niche kind of markets. Like you can try to break down the differences in markets as far as like single family versus vacation properties versus like big city, New York, Miami, LA versus rural like farmland and horse farms and, you know, all the different kinds, military towns, commercial property. There's so many different little sectors if you will, right? But it all comes down to one thing and you can even look outside of the country. Let's go to South Africa. Let's go to Canada and Brazil and all these places that I've, I went to Brazil. I was a keynote speaker there at R4 in Brazil. I coach agents in South Africa and Canada and India. And I look at all these different countries. Listen, again, the common denominator is a real conversation and people just want to know that you care. I don't care what planet you're on. People just want to know that you care, right? If you will have a real conversation, if you have a lead generation source that can produce enough phone numbers or whatever to have you on the phone for three hours a day to create those five new relationships and show people that you care. When they know that you care, then they care what you know.