 Build your database. You want the most massive database that you can possibly build. You're the size of your database is going to dictate the size of your income. And there was a gentleman that I knew really well who helped me in the beginning of my career who sold 30 properties that year in this crazy down year. I mean, this is three properties a month, you know, in this market where nobody's selling anything, everybody's leaving the business, including myself, and this guy sells 30 properties. So I went to his house, wanted to know how he's doing all this, and I was mind blown that this was happening. So this is, again, the gentleman who helped me in the very beginning of my career, in the very beginning of my career, you know, he taught me how to find property owners, how to target property owners, how to find phone numbers, how to call property owners, what to say to property owners, direct mail to send the property owners, emails to send the property owners. He taught me all this stuff, or at least he showed me what he was doing. Very generous. Phone calls, emails, and postcards. And so I went to him years later when, you know, after 2006, I realized he sold 30 properties, and I said, how are you doing this? He said, come over to the house, and I'll sit down, I'll show you everything I'm doing. So I went over there, sat down, long story short, what was he doing? He was doing phone calls, emails, and postcards. He wasn't doing anything different, right? And this was so eye-opening to me, right? So, you know, he's doing the same actions, but the message was a little different. I was about 50% cheaper where I am during that time. And so his message was, hey, the sand is just as beautiful. The sun is shining just as bright, and you could be on the beach, and you could have a condo for 50% less than what they were. Who wants in? You know, that was his message, and he was doing very well with that. And so I just kind of started messing around with that same philosophy, and started taking a little bit of an action, and started reaching out to some people. And before I knew it, I was laid off in the oil rig and kind of forced back into real estate. Luckily enough, I had some momentum there in the business. Nothing completely under contract yet, but shortly after, I put two condos under contract. Closed on them on the same day. I remember it was like May 31st, 2008. Think about how easy it would be. Think about how easy this market would be when the pendulum swings the other way just for a second, and we have more inventory to choose from. Think about all your sellers that say, I don't have anywhere to move to. I would sell. I would love to sell for these high prices, but where are I going to move? Think of that in that scenario that there were plenty of houses to choose from. And there wasn't that much competition of those houses. And they were, you know, could be bought at a decent price, right? You could actually be in a situation where your seller can move forward, upgrade to the house they want. People want to upgrade. It's just human nature. You know, they live in a place for a while, and then they want something new. They want to upgrade. They want something nicer, or in a different area, or on the water. It's just human nature. And so, you know, there's a lot. This is the most pent-up seller demand I've ever seen right now. The market's still on fire, right? The market, this is still of an incredibly high-demand, low-inventory market. You know, it's going to take a lot for that to change. But are we starting to move in that direction? That's the question. Maybe, maybe not. There's definitely some signs of it doing that. Will that trend continue? That's yet to be seen. We'll just have to continue to watch it. But if you guys can imagine how easier, right, how easier this market's going to be a cakewalk for a lot of you who've been making calls and talking to sellers who can't find anywhere to go, just think if you had options for those sellers to move to and then list their house. Now you've got two deals. And hey, you probably have a buyer in your back pocket for their house. Now you're double-ending and probably selling that buyer's house, right? I mean, just think about how massive it could be when things do loosen up. As great as it is right now. This is a great market to be in as well. I don't want to downplay how incredible this market is right now. But I think what you guys should focus on, if you want to build that business that's not going to be wavered, is one thing is understand the philosophy, fees of everything I learned through the big market crash, A, which I want to share with you right now, and then B, build your database. I want the most massive database that you can possibly build. The size of your database is going to dictate the size of your income. Period end of story. The more people in your local market who know who you are, that you guys have heard all this before. It's nothing new. Right? I think the problem is people are trying to get around the actual sweat equity that you have to put into actually talking voice to voice to as many people as possible to create those great first impressions. I think too many of us are trying to sidestep that sweat equity you have to put into your business of the actual conversations that have to take place to create that great first impression slash lifelong relationship. Every relationship that you put in place, even if they are not interested in buying or selling today or not, and that's a big thing there because a lot of people are only going after motivated buyers or sellers. And I'm not. I'm going after everybody. I want everybody to know who I am, what I do and I'm here to help. But every relationship you put in place with someone in your market, regardless if you don't want to buy or sell today or not, is worth 10 to 20 deals to you over the life of your career. So you can think, okay, you didn't sell anything today. You didn't sell any appointments. You didn't close anything or show any property. But you talked to three people who you had a great conversation with, a great first impression. You collected their data so that then you could put them in your personal branding machine. In my opinion, you just did 30 to 60 deals. That's going to happen over the course of the next 20 years or whatever the life of your career is. It's not happening today, but in my mind you just did 30 to 60 deals right then and there. That's the seeds that you're planting that over time through repeat business referrals and referrals of referrals will produce those 30 to 60 deals. They're going to sell next year once their daughter graduates and they're going to downsize because they don't need that extra room anymore. That's already in their head. It's not up to us, it's up to us to listen to that and then create a game plan around that and help them accomplish that. Not to try to figure out a way to talk them into doing it now, which I think is what a lot of agents are doing. Just grasp all this. I've already talked about closings happening every day. When closings happen every day, you start to realize business is unlimited. Think about it for a second. Business is unlimited. You can't do every deal. No one can do every deal. Zillow can't even do every deal. No entity can do every deal. It creates a situation because the process of from relationship to closed transaction is such a process, you guys know. No one can do every deal. You can only handle so much. Once you realize that closings happen every day and business is unlimited and competition doesn't exist, now your success is 100 million percent predicated on just how much you can handle. There's always more than you can handle. So think about it. If your breaking point is 20 active listings, another eight pending deals and then you're working with five to 10 more buyers and sellers, maybe those numbers are your breaking point. Everyone has a breaking point. You can only handle so many listings, so many pinnings, so many people that you're trying to follow up with on top of trying to create new business. You can only handle so much. So, and some people can handle more than others. And I refer to this as your cup. How big is your cup? How much can you handle? The size of your cup is gonna dictate how successful you can be in terms of reaching your full potential, in terms of comparing yourself to other people. Never, ever, ever compare yourself to other people. Use other people as a way to learn, as a way to watch what they're doing and create goals, right? And if you see someone working, your goal should be to outwork them, right? If you know who the number one agent in Oklahoma is and you can actually see what they do on a daily basis, your job at that point is to put together a plan to beat them at their own game in terms of just outworking them. If you outwork them long enough, eventually you're gonna be number one, everything. You look at all the different sources, okay? And you know, I did an event in Miami. I just did an event in Salt Lake. I've done hundreds of Zoom calls and I've asked probably at this point, I know tens of thousands of agents, maybe even over a hundred thousand agents. I've asked them, out of all the lead generation sources, every lead generation source comes right back to the same activity, which is what? Voice to voice conversation. When you get the zealot lead, what do you have to do? Call them immediately, talk to them. Facebook, open house. Open house, you're talking to them there and then what do you have to do? Call them the next day, follow up. Direct mail, we're trying to create a scenario where they're calling us quite possibly or maybe we're sending the direct mail to reach out to them to say, did you get the direct mail? Whatever the case may be, every single avenue comes right back to the same activity, which is a real conversation. Here's my strategy on just, I would never do obsidian, I wouldn't even have new agents do obsidian or any kind of those buyer lead things, wouldn't have them do it at all. But if they were, the way that I handle leads like that is I'm gonna call them, I'm gonna call them and I'm gonna try to talk to them and see what I can do to help them. If they don't answer, I'm gonna leave a message and I'm gonna text them. If they don't respond to that, I'm gonna try and back the next day and if I don't hear from them, if they don't answer or respond that second time, that's it. They're just gonna go into my weekly email database and I'll let them come back to me if they ever want to. I'm not gonna chase dead leads. I have too, there's too many, there's too much business out there guys, it's unlimited, there's too much out there to sit around and chase dead leads. There's too many people that will respond, that want to do business with you, that need our help, too many of them. And if I'm wasting my time on a dead lead, then I'm literally basically in essence saying, I'm saying no to the leads that will do business with me, that will respond, that do need my help. I'm basically saying no, I'm not gonna spend time with you guys, I'm gonna spend time up here in this dead lead. It's not smart, too much business out there. Everybody has an email, like when you sign up for any app, what do they ask for? First thing, your email. I mean, everyone has an email or is gonna have an email. Everybody still gets mail at their house, right? Like back in the Pony Express days, like it's still relevant. You can still hand write a letter, hand write the envelope, hand write it, and send it to them, they're gonna open it. You send, you mail it to them, a real letter, they're gonna open it. You've got their attention now, now what? No, direct mail's still relevant. Here we are email, email is just as relevant as ever. And I'm not saying, okay, don't pay attention to other avenues, sure. But where's the organic reach, right? The only thing better than email is text, right? Maybe text will become the new email, right? I don't know. And I've always been big on you should have a text database as well. You should have a bulk texting going on once a month. You should do that. You should text out like a monthly text that's maybe a link to one of your weekly emails or something. Look at me, watch me, look at my stuff. I'm on every platform and I post every day. I mean, I'm talking iTunes, podcasts, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, every single platform. And there's only four activities that should trump that. Show and property, listing appointment, writing an offer or negotiating a deal. Those are the four most important activities for any real estate agent. Showing, listing appointment, writing an offer, negotiating. Those four activities are at the very highest hierarchy of activities, okay? Those four are number one. Number two in the hierarchy is making your calls and then everything else is under that. So like for example, if you have to show property on a Tuesday and say you show property all day or whatever and you can't make your calls, that's okay. Showing property is more important than making calls. A lot of people beat theirself up because they make a goal and then they don't make the goal because they're busy like closing on deals. And I'm like, that's good, we're closing deals. People are too hard on theirself, you know, stay busy. All you can do is all you can do, right? There's gotta be a point where you're happy and satisfied with what you get done. Too many people are unhappy with their results when really they should be ecstatic. You know, a lot of people say, oh, I can't time block. You know, how do you time block? I can't get my calls in. I said, no, you don't have a time blocking issue, right? You don't have a time blocking issue. You're doing activities between nine and 12 every day. It's not the time blocking, that's the problem. It's your prioritizing, that's the problem. You're not prioritizing. You're doing something between nine and 12. It's just not what you're supposed to be doing. Put something else ahead of the calls, ahead of whatever, showing property, negotiating. I would fear to say none of you are gonna put anything ahead of showing property and negotiating, writing offers, you're gonna listen to appointments. But you'll definitely put stuff ahead of making calls when in fact, the calls are the most important thing you can do. It doesn't matter to me where you get your leads from. You gotta call them. Even if you're not making call calls and calling property owners like which none of you said, none of you raised up and said anything better than the strategy I just gave you. Let me repeat it. Calling target of property owners for two cents a piece just to make friends followed by a weekly email on the same day that we forever. Nobody here can tell me anything better.