 The man who teaches relationships over transactions, allow me to introduce to you all Ricky Karoo. To learn how to build a better real estate business, give me 5 seconds to get loud. Ella said, as a single agent, with one assistant since 2014, I've sold over 100 properties a year. Think about it for just a second. Let it digest. 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18, and going on 19, 20, 21. Just a little bit about how to be efficient and how to scale my business. I'm a single agent doing these numbers. Zero to diamond to me is not just a free real estate coaching program. It's a symbol. It's a real estate movement. I'm reducing the failure rate. For those of you who don't understand why I'm here, what I'm doing, what my mission is, is to reduce the failure rate, which is incredibly high. I want to reduce the failure rate in the real estate industry, and it's happening. I have agents email me every week talking about they've tried everything they were about to have to quit, and then they failed me online somewhere and started implementing just the little, simple things. Everything is free. The difference in paid coaching and free coaching to me, and the reason why I'm growing so fast, we're signing up 50 agents a day. And when I say we, it's just me. I'm the whole company, right? But the reason I'm growing so fast is not because it's free, and it's just, oh, let's sign up for this free thing. It's because when I make a video, it's really me. I'm not trying to hide anything, hoping that you pay me for some secret that I'm leaving out to the public, and so I can be completely genuine and tell you every little secret to how I'm doing my business, the ins and outs, ask me a question, DM me. I answer every single DM, and it takes a lot of time out of my day. But why do I do it? Because I really want to help reduce the value rate. I see what's happening out there, and to me it's just crazy. I think this is the new age of the industry. You know, do you want to buy or sell is 1980s. Is there anything in the world I can do to help you is today's world. Providing value up front, seeing what you can do to help them. I think that I was talking with an agent earlier, and she started using my screw up. She started, she was always making calls, but she used to make the calls looking for deals. And if a prospect wasn't ready to do a deal right then, then she would just move on. That's what she was coached to do. That's what she was taught to do. But you're talking to the prospect anyway. That's a precious moment in time. That you actually got the property owner on the phone, and in this moment you can't let it pass. You may never talk to this person ever again. Why not put yourself in a position to create this relationship, a deep relationship with them for the future? Because the fact is that they are going to buy or sell something in the future. It may be next month, a year, two years, five years, 20 years. It's going to happen. And so we have this precious moment where we're talking to them. Let's take advantage of it. Quit thinking so short term about how do I do a deal today, and start concentrating on how can I help people and create relationships today. When you have a phone call session, you don't get any appointments. You feel bad. But you're focused on the appointments. Broke that moment that you realize appointments do not matter whatsoever. The best thing for that client may be an appointment, but it may not be an appointment. Right? But we're just coach, go after the appointment, set the appointment. You're not listening to what they want, what's best for them. So I'm just getting warmed up here guys. You all ready for this? Hype! Put some Q&A. I love Q&A. Before I get really started, I do want to give a couple shout outs. Especially the man that put all this together, Camelo. Wherever he is, confidence. So just a quick story. He found me on Instagram about three months ago. We met each other three months ago on Instagram. We messaged back and forth. We ended up talking on the phone. And he said, I want to do an event down here in Miami. And I'm going to have you on the big screen. You don't even have to come down here. And I said, great. Let's do it. Because I love doing a Zoom call with offices. I love doing that. If anybody here wants to do a Zoom call with their office and do a Q&A or a presentation or something like that, just hit me up and let's set it up because I love doing those. So that's what I thought I was going to be. Like a Zoom call thing for all you guys. And he was talking about maybe 50 agents or something like that. And after a couple of weeks, I watched him work and I saw the work he was putting into it. And I actually noticed that there was some serious potential for this. And I called him up and I said, hey man, I'm just going to come down there. And he was like, really? I was like, yeah, let's just come down there and I want to just blow this thing up. Because I knew there was people that needed to hear my message. And what I'm really trying to do, industry-wide, worldwide. So here we are. So big shout out to Lincoln's Beer Brewery for letting us use their facilities. Also my video art for Blake. When I was really young, really little boy, I knew that I had something. I didn't know what. But there were two qualities that I noticed really early. That we're going to take me somewhere really far. I didn't know where, I didn't know how. But I knew I had these two things. I was really curious about stuff. I wanted to know how things worked. I wanted to just know stuff. I was curious. And I was really, really competitive. I wanted to be the best at everything. And when you really think about those two qualities, and you combine those two qualities, it's a really special thing. You're really curious about how things work in terms of real estate. It's like how did the top producer get there? How's he selling all this property? And when you are curious enough to acquire that knowledge, and then you add on top that you're really competitive, and now you know what they're doing, the competitive side of you makes you outwork them so that you can be the best. Because that's the only way to be the best, is to outwork everybody. Is to learn what they're doing and outwork them. And so work ethic was never really in it for me. Work ethic was a secondary characteristic for me through being so competitive. I wanted to beat everybody in sports, you know? I wanted to practice harder. I wanted to beat everybody. When I was a teenager, I strutted Ruthie with my father. Again, I'm very competitive. He was the best. He was the best on any job side. He laid more shingles than anybody. Sorry, dad. I want to be the best now. I learned what he did on Washington, and then I started putting the work in. One of the last roots we ever did together, I'll never forget it, I beat him to the top. And it wasn't just beating to the top, right? I was in the valley, right? A valley comes in, you're putting shingles over each other. We even them up the roof. He's just on a straight, straight to the top, and I beat him up the valley. And that was a real... That was something I'll never forget, because it proved to me that if I did put the work in, if I was curious enough to figure out how to do it, and then I was competitive enough to put the work in, then I could be the best. And that was a real moment for me. Shortly after that, I got my real estate license. I was 20 years old. It was 2002. So now I'm roofing into a real estate. Actually, I felt a history class. I went to four different colleges in two years, and I said, college is not for me. I felt like more of a liability than an asset. My parents were paying a lot of money for me to go to college. I didn't even know what I wanted to do. And I realized that the real estate, to get your license, is one class. So you're telling me I can get my license in one class, or I can go to school for 10 years and be a doctor or lawyer, and really have the same opportunities to make the same kind of money and stuff. Okay? So, of course, I want the real estate route. This opened up my eyes to the fact that curiosity, and being competitive are really important, but also being efficient. If you really look back at my life and how everything has kind of played out, and really point at the activities and the actions, it's these small little efficiencies that most people don't get. It's the little efficiencies that add up to be so big over time. So I get my license. I quit roofing. I was like, I'm retired now from roofing. I'm done with that. I sell real estate for 30 days. Don't sell anything. Have to go back to roofing. I'm back on the roof. I'm selling real estate at the same time, trying to figure real estate out. It took me eight months to make my first sale. How many people here sold a property in fewer than eight months of getting their license? You guys are way ahead of me. If you give it 20 years from now, you guys will be light years ahead of me. Now, it is a completely different world now. When I started, there was no Zillow. There was no Facebook. The technology was basically zero at that time. We barely had emails and text messages and stuff. Barely had MLS. MLS was brand new right before I started real estate. So, I made my first sale. It was my grandmother's condo. It's not going to lie. I did sell a condo of just a prospect that I worked and counting. And I sold this condo. It closed the same day. I had two closing. My first closing was two closings in one day. And it was two deals. From there on, I sold two a month for a long time. And I was able to do real estate full-time. And here I am, I'm 21. I started making some really good money. Then the market completely explodes. And I've become a self-made millionaire overnight. By the time I'm 23, I've got hummers, two hummers, Cadillacs, houses, and a lot of properties. I've earned a lot of money to buy the properties. I was flipping. The market crashes. And, you know, the reason I did the properties is because growing up, for me, like the golden rule, because we never had money. My parents didn't know what to do with money because we never had money. So they can't teach somebody what to do with money because they've never done it themselves. But the golden rule was always by property. So that's what I did. I bought a lot of property, I borrowed a lot of money, and I thought, I'm good. This is it. I'm done. It's gonna be multi-gazillionaire. Then the market crashes. And when the market crashed, everybody kept saying, give it two years. It'll come back. Then two years ago, they said, give it two years. It'll come back. Two more years went by. Give it two more years. It'll come back. Because most people don't understand completely that when the crash happened, real estate started to go down in price around in 2005. The start market didn't completely tank until 2008. People, everybody associates the crash with that. But property started to go down in 2005. People watched the movie The Big Short when they got that against all this. He knew, he saw, he knew what was gonna happen. He got real mad because people were delinquent on their notes long before that stop went down. And he was mad because he was thinking, this is not the way that it's supposed to go, but they were just prolonging it. It was already crashing long before it crashed. The guys on Wall Street just didn't want to crash yet. So they did everything they could to prolong it. But it crashed. 2005 started going down. When the market crashed and I had all these loans, I kept trying to hang on and have reserves, but I kept paying off the loans with the reserves, thinking it was gonna come back, and it never did. I ended up losing everything. I lost every single thing I had. I was living in a car that was given to me to sleep on Friends' Couches. This is 2007, 2006. 2006, at all, finally, the whole house of cars completely failed. 2000, I went back to roofing houses. Now I'm back roofing houses again. Well, that business was really bad, too. The whole economy was bad. It wasn't just real estate or this or that. It was everything. 2007, I get a job in a whole rig. Now, I'm working on a whole rig, and I'm thinking, this is great because I'm there every other week. And so I can work one week on the rig and one week on real estate. One on the rig, one on real estate. Didn't work out like that because when you work on a whole rig, you work six o'clock at night until six in the morning, one whole week, then you go home, then you recover. Then the next week, you work six in the morning until six in the evening, so they swap you. So you're always kind of discombobulated, plus the work was legit. Like, it was crazy out there. And I'll tell you a quick story. I don't think I've ever told anybody this publicly, but the first week that I was on the rig almost died. The last day, it was an hour before we were all fixing up home for the week. And there was an air voice that I was working on all night long putting the pipe together so that they could drill it in the ground. And every time they would drill one on the ground, I would go up there and do what they told me to do. When they did it, we had like a 30-minute break in between. Well, during one of those 30-minute breaks, when I wasn't standing next to that air voice, I don't know, a 200-pound piece of metal or something fell from about 150 feet up and demolished that air voice. It was completely demolished. This was the first week I was on the all rig. I never told that story, but anyway. I worked on the all rig for a year. Again, I was so curious. I wanted to know why I failed. And I was just talking to some guys over here a minute ago. And they wanted to know, they said, that turning point in your life and your career was when you lost everything and that's when you realized what it was supposed to be. What was the deal there? Well, what it was is that I was, to put it simply, I was thinking, thank God. Because I was 25 and there were guys, there were 45 and 55 and 65 right next to me doing the same things I was doing and they lost everything too. But I was 25. And I thought, thank God, this happened to me at this age because I knew that it would never happen to me again. I was going to figure out why it happened. I was going to build it back stronger than before where it would never, ever, ever go away. So my curiosity brought me to the agents in my market that were still crushing it through the crash. And I was mind boggling. How are you guys doing this? I wanted to have lunch with them. I wanted to hang out with them. I wanted to go see them. I wanted to ask them questions. And there was a guy by the name of Scott Myrick in Gulf Shores, Alabama. When I first started in real estate, he was my mentor. He showed me, like, non-label mentor. He was just an agent in the office that wanted to help. And he showed me how to look up property owners, what to say, how to call, what letters to write, what you post for, it's how to make labels, just all that stuff. And he helped me. We were at Exit Realty. I've been with seven companies total. You know, do the crash. I moved all around just to stay active and everything. And he had problems. He left real estate for a minute and all this and that. But he was there during the crash. And he was still crushing it. And this is the guy, my boyfriend, that helped me when I first started. I went to him and I said, man, you have to tell me what you're doing. How are you selling 30 properties a year? And I'm selling nothing. Nobody else is selling anything. How are you doing this? He said, come over. Come over to the house. And I'll show you everything I'm doing. Well, you know, all that stuff. I said, cool. So I go over there. We start going through everything. And it's the same exact, he showed me how to look up property owners, the numbers, what to say to them, how to do postcards. The same stuff he told me from the beginning was the same exact stuff he told me. Now, it doesn't change. What changes is the climate of the market. Through all this, I read over 100 books during this time. That's how curious I was. I don't read as much anymore. I more watch and listen because I'm so busy. It's hard for me to read. But I try to read maybe 10 books a year now. And then I listen to a lot of podcasts and YouTube videos and stuff like that. But at the time, I wasn't so busy. And I had time to try to figure this out. So I read 100 books in about a year. So there were other agents, too, that I studied and wanted to know how they're doing this. After I gathered all my data and went back to the drawing board, and I'm still working on the whole rig, I realized a lot of things. This is, I'm going to name all this stuff and I want you to really think about this and take this with you. When the market crashes, closing still happens every single day. Every single day. Do they go down? Sure. But they still happen every single day. I also realized that business is unlimited. Completely unlimited for each and every agent. That's tough to wrap your mind around. Because there's such a widespread thought on scarcity. I was watching a YouTube video this week where a guy said, agents are going to have to get out of the business when the market crashes because there's not enough business to go around. I'm doing a video right now to rebuttal that because there's plenty of business to go around. On limited business, it means that there's more than you can handle. I think about it like a buffet. Can you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet and eat all the food there? No. It's the same thing with the real estate market. There's only so much up there you can see it all. Just like you can see the closings every day and each month and all year. There's only so many, sure. Can you eat it all? No. If you like the chicken and you tell all your buddies, hey, the chicken's really good and they start going after the chicken, do they eat it all? No. They keep bringing out more chicken every day. There's more chicken. Right? It doesn't matter if you tell everybody, I'm coaching for free. I'm telling you how I make a million dollars a year as a single agent. Every single last detail. And you know what's really funny? I've been sending out, who gets my emails every day? If you're not, just go to my website, www.virtus.com or pay the free account. You'll get the emails every day. I've been sending those emails out to every single agent in my entire MLS. There's only 2,000 agents in my account. My direct competition, direct people in the office, right down the road, on the remixes that we don't like and all this stuff. Right? Even the agent said, I have problems with, I have weird deals and you know, strange confrontations and stuff, they still get it. I didn't take anybody out. So I got just like trying to hide anything. I haven't lost a single deal. Why? Because I'm all in on the fact that it's unlimited and I'm proving it. And so what I want you to do is to see that and recognize that business is unlimited. It doesn't matter that an agent is dominating a subdivision. Okay? There's people, there's owners in that subdivision that are tired of that agent that want another agent to step in and start farming that subdivision because no other agent is doing it because they're scared that they're not going to get the business because the top agent already has all the business. I could call a subdivision, the whole subdivision, I could use the same exact phone numbers, you could call the same exact subdivision an hour after I call them and we're going to have two different sets of results because our personalities are so different. We're going to match up with people differently. It's all about connecting with people, making people feel comfortable and some people are going to like you and some people aren't. You're not going to want them all. You can't call all the property owners in your area ever. You can't call all the property owners in your market ever in your life. It's a fact. Because you might think different. Don't scratch your nose, man. I'm going to point you out. You can't call them all. Everybody agrees with me with that. What does that do? It just proves my point again that it's unlimited. You can't call all the property owners and say, hey, what in the world can I do for you today? Never going to happen. Closings happen every day. Business is completely unlimited. Okay, here's another one. This is a big one. What's up, guys? I forgot about it. Now, how do you forget about it? Where's my neck? Lost a deal this year so far and didn't like how it felt. Y'all are liars. Come on, guys. Listen, listen, listen to me. Okay, in your entire career, who lost a deal in a herd? Everybody. I lost like four deals today. Okay, listen to me. Let me tell you about losing deals. Raise your hand if you know what I'm fixing to say. Good, nobody. Listen. Losing deals are the greatest thing that could ever happen to you. Number one, they're inevitable. You're not going to win them all, right? So let's just get that out on the table. You're not going to win every deal. But when you lose the deal, think about this. Okay, you learned something, one. Which nobody cares about. Like, you guys aren't even thinking about what you learned from it. You just heard that you lost the deal. And it wasn't even your deal. It's not your property. The money was never even there. You know what I'm saying? It's not even your decision. Somebody else's decision. You hope that they would make. Right? But you lost it. Okay? But you learned something. Think about what you learned. That makes you a better agent. And this is cliche, right? Oh, you learned something, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Listen to what I'm saying. What you learned just made you a better agent, okay? But here's the kicker. When you lose it, you don't have to spend any more time on that deal anymore. And so, like, you get future time back. You get future time back. But how else can you get, like, time back? Times are the most valuable asset. If you actually took the time that you would've spent on that deal and go get five more deals, like initiate five more deals in the same timeframe that it took you to close all those deals, think about where you would be if you did that to every deal you lost. And how happy you would be when you lose deals because you know you're facing to get five more. Because business is unlimited and closing is happening every day. Right? It doesn't matter if everybody knows it. Because they can't do it all. They can't think. I haven't lost a single client since I've been doing this with my local market. I've been waiting for the day where somebody came up and said, this agent called me and sounds exactly like you. Or sends me a weekly email that looks exactly like yours. Hasn't happened yet in two years. Are they just not doing it? I don't know. Somebody has to be doing it, right? I sold more property than anybody in my county last year. Somebody has to be listening to me. They see me doing it firsthand right there. Losing deals back to that. I'll tell you something else. I really want you to take this with you. It's crippling you because you're trying to convert every single deal because you're scared you're going to lose the deal. And you're wasting more time on each situation than you should be. Because you're scared you're going to lose it. You're trying so hard to convert it. It cripples you from having time to help other people. Can I say something? You know what, sometimes you're so afraid to hear the word no. You know, shut up. You're afraid for somebody that you know that they might just say no and you just keep talking. Sometimes you have to stop back and listen to the customer, especially when you're on the phone. And we are all afraid to say no. You're all afraid of making calls. We've already said it. So remember, just shut up and listen. And that will give you the audible cue that can lead that conversation further. Agreed. Oh, let me take questions at the end, alright? Yeah. So, look. You're spending so much time trying to convert. You're scared to lose it. Then when you lose it, you're really crippled. Quit trying to convert and just connect. Regardless if they want to do a deal today or not. Does this make sense? This is wild. Okay, so here I am. Still working on the whole rig. I realize all this, right? The biggest thing that I realize? The biggest thing I realize. On top of all that stuff, like unlimited business and all that crazy stuff, you know, whatever, relationships over transactions. That was my main thing was that the whole first half of my career, it was all about the deal. It was all about the deal, the closing, the money. I didn't care about the people. That was my downfall. That's why I couldn't sell properties through the crash. Because I was going after deals where there's less deals. So I was in a scarcity situation. If you think deals, you are in a scarcity situation. Think about that for a second. If you're going after deals, if you're going after the money, but if you think in terms of relationships, that's unlimited. And that pays way more than a transaction. Every prospect that you connect with, regardless if they want to do a deal or not, is worth 10 to 20 deals to you over life or your career. Through repeat business referrals and referrals and referrals. Some of my best clients never even bought a piece of property for me. I showed them property for five days straight, 18 years ago, they never bought anything. They've referred like 15 people to me in 10 years, or something like that, right? I would call that one of my best clients. Never bought a piece of property from me. Did I try to get them pre-qualified? No. Did I sign a buyer agency's agreement? No. I just want to help them do what I want to do. If a buyer comes to me, I'm going to make a judgment call. I'm going to evaluate their situation. I'm going to decide, do I want this or do I not? I'm referring it for a referral fee, which I never do, by the way. I never turn to anybody down. I don't get enough buyers. I'm not buying leads. And every buyer I get is from a referral or a past client, and I have to take it for the sake of the referral or the past client. A lot of people ask me how I do 100 deals a year as a single agent. And it's like, I don't set out to do 100 deals. I just work every day. And 100 deals is what comes out of it. How do you show all those properties? How do you go to all those appointments? How do you do all this and do all that? I don't know. I just work all day. I do all I can do. I help as many people as I can. I try to be as efficient as I possibly can. And 100 deals is what comes out the other side. See what I'm saying? To me, there's no equation to it. To me, there's not make this many calls and you're going to get an appointment or a listing. I know what that number is. And it's different for everybody. Right? What do I do when I talk to somebody that doesn't want to do anything? I get their email, put them on my weekly email database. They're getting it. They call me five years later and say, I've been getting your weekly email for five years and I'm ready to do this. I'm ready to buy right now. And I'm like, what's your name? Because I don't spend time organizing I don't spend time doing that. That's taking time away from helping more people. I don't want to know all that stuff. If somebody says they want to do something soon, they go on a sheet of paper that I keep a list and I'm going to follow up with them the way that I think they need to be followed up with. Right? I'm going to stay on them. They want to do something, but they don't want to do anything. What am I going to do with them? Remember their name? Or what? Thousands of them. What are you going to do? Organize it all? You've got to be careful about organization. There's a fine line between organization and spending too much time taking time away from doing the things that you really need to do to help a lot of people. We're right on time. I want to talk about efficiency and scalability real quick. To me, efficiency is in real estate There's all these leaves. There's all these different things you can do. There's always a way to get business. To me, who's the highest quality prospect? Somebody tell me what the highest quality prospect is. Y'all are all following me. It's property owners. Why? Because you know what efficiency is? It's what makes me the most amount of money in the least amount of time. Think about it. Property owners buy and sell. They're going to buy or sell, right? They already own. They're going to do something at some point. Chances are really high. That's pretty high quality. On top of the fact that you can pick your price point. You can say, I want to call a subdivision. I want to be in that $500,000 range. Boom, you're there. You don't have to wait for a buyer lead to come to you that wants something for $150,000. You pick your price point. We're being more efficient. We're picking our price point and we're dealing with prospects that we know are going to buy and sell. That's the highest quality that there is in real estate. Does anyone here just raise your hand if you know of anything that could be more efficient than just property owners? Raise your hand if you have a rebuttal. Yes ma'am? Property owners, you know? Good one. You got me. Highest quality. And I've already established guys, this is like golden stuff. I've already established with you and you've already agreed that it's unlimited. You can't call all the property owners ever. So you have an unlimited resource of the highest quality prospects in your market. Every agent does. And you can't call them all. And it doesn't matter if you know the strategy I'm talking about and you try to compete against each other and all that stuff. It's not going to work. It's a buffet. Is this making sense? Is this helping anybody? This is real stuff. This is the stuff nobody really knows. I can tell you everything that I know because I don't want to dime for me. Scalability. Efficiency to me was hey, quit going after the deal, concentrate on the people, put relationships over transactions every single time. I think one of the best strategies, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, I think one of the best strategies for new agents or even an agent that's just trying to go help a for sale by owner and really not like really put work in hours to help them sell it and not ask for anything in return and see what happens. See what happens. That relationship over that transaction is going to take you so much further than just trying to do deals. I'm telling you right now, I wish I would have known this a long time ago. Got off track. Scalability. When I got back in real estate, okay 2007, the whole rig I realized all this it's about the people the property owners, all this I started sending emails because there were so many foreclosures. I was sending emails to everybody in the southeast saying Gulf Shores, Orange Beach foreclosures the beach is 50% off, come get it and people responded 1,000 people, that was 2008 1,000 people responded to a million emails and 20 of them bought something and it's crazy because I got laid off from the old rig at the beginning of 2008 I got laid off and I was already dabbling in real estate and somehow I had a closing lined up and I got laid off and I remember before the closing I had a bar of $500 from my dad just to make it through to that closing and that was it as soon as I hit that closing it was $20,000 I was back in business and I knew it was over I knew all the aid and everybody was going to hate me because I was fixing to take over and that's what happened, I slowly started to put pieces of the puzzle in place and when I was emailing everybody about the foreclosures I kept hearing people kept replying and saying send me the weekly foreclosures send them to me every week I heard it over and over and over again and so I started sending them a list of the foreclosures every week I did it every Wednesday so the more I did that for a couple weeks and then I ended up just putting my entire database on there and then I started to put more market information in there than just the foreclosures and then as time went on and the foreclosures went away it just turned into a market report this is the evolution of my weekly email that's been going out every Wednesday since 2007 I was still in the oil rig when I started this 12 years 12 years every single Wednesday since 2007 okay through hurricanes hit in our area through old skills through weird moments in my life through changing companies vacations when I'm not here it never missed a Wednesday I started to view that email as the foundation of my business as a way to create a sense of like glue to hold my business together to keep everybody in tune with me and then I'm there to help and so I took my philosophy of the relationships over transactions and I applied it to this weekly email I created every week it's not it's original content created by me on a whim every Wednesday market information, new listings, pinnings picture feature properties, so on and so forth whatever but it's so deep the weekly email is so deep the philosophy behind it because it does so much the scalability of it I want to get into that but before I do the consistency of it deepens the relationship for you without you having to call them every year every six months when you have thousands of people you can't call a past client they want to talk for 30 minutes and catch up it's not like a cold call the last 30 seconds a minute, four minutes right they don't know you it's a quick conversation it's a stick and move situation but when you call past clients that you've done business with or know who you are they want to catch up they want to talk about you know their daughters and Christmas and everything else they want to know about you you get into these conversations and that's great but the point is you can't do that for thousands of people you can't think about how many 30 minute calls you can have in a year I don't know how many I've thought it up but you know it's tough right so the weekly email gives you an opportunity to deepen those they know that you love them because of the way you handle the transaction they know they understand the relationship and then the email just keeps you in front of them where when they get ready to do something they call you they know what they call you answer and you get right on whatever it was they wanted they wanted these people are family to you now my clients are my extended family I call it the FE effect friend or family effect I was talking to somebody in the back and he said man when I met you all ago I've seen you on YouTube but when I met you all ago it was like man I feel like I've known you forever because I give that effect that I've known you forever okay it's a skill and the thing is the skill comes from intent genuinely caring about people and when you care about them they feel it if you're there for just a deal they feel that too so you gotta decide what side of the track you're on because I promise you right now the intent of caring about people and the way it makes people feel you're gonna do long term business this is where people get a little bit sideways with my strategy they think that it's so long term they think it's so long term but where's the conversion at you don't gotta convert you gotta connect they've already decided when they wanna buy or sell something it's not up to you to talk them into it it's your job to connect with them make sure they don't have another agent that they wanna work with and that the door is open for you to begin this relationship and then be there for them until they decide right so the weekly email is it gives you scalability it shows them how dependable hardworking, honest, professional it does all that for you across as many people as you want I spend 30 minutes on it a week and it doesn't matter if I have a thousand or 50 thousand it still takes 30 minutes that's scalability I'm able to scale my business to where I spend 30 minutes a week on all my total database every week and then outside of that I'm just working my deals to do something who can I help now the weekly email to me I mean that's just that's like the end all be all okay but say you don't wanna do that okay cool it's still whatever your system is it's gotta be consistent and it's gotta be something real right but scalability is using technology to nurture your relationships that's scalability efficiency is because you know property owners are unlimited you do nothing but talk to property owners all day long you can't talk to them why would you talk to anybody else scalability is staying in front of them with some sort of technology forever right so I get back in I'm doing really good I made 80 thousand in 2008 that was a step I was making 40 on the whole rig you know almost dying several times super dangerous now I'm back I mean it I mean it all like I can almost get emotional about it you know what I'm saying like getting back in the game after being knocked down so hard and coming back the way that I did um it was a real feeling 2009 I do 100 I'm like yeah let's do this thing 2010 boom the oil spill BP oil spill completely devastates our area okay I'm right on the Alabama 4 to go a line we're on the Gulf Coast white sandy beaches million dollar condos the oil spill happens and the media blew it up scared everybody for me it was like should have because what if it would have been something crazy right what if it wouldn't have been some poison to kill a bunch of people they didn't know a lot of people were mad at the media for blowing it up the way they did but really they did what they needed they did what they were I think they did what they should have done so nobody came to our area we normally get 6 million tourists a year our population is 20,000 small town but our tourism is 6 million that year it was I don't know very little okay agents were leaving the beach and going to Birmingham it's gonna be black seas forever you know they kept playing the video of the seal up in Alaska and stuff everybody was scared owners were dumping their condos and when this happened I recognized it because like when the oil spill happened I lost like 5 contracts I had under contract they backed out they were scared and they backed out of deals I had under contract pending and to me immediate sign of a crash right price was going down people were scattering that's a crash I didn't know where how big of a crash how small a crash was gonna be but I knew it was a crash and I said yes this is my opportunity to try out my theories of what I learned in the big crash to see if I can really make it through a crash the closings really continue to happen every day this business completely unlimited you know all that stuff I was talking about a while ago I had an opportunity to actually see if that was really true it's not like I went through the crash and then I figured it out and I thought oh yeah I'm just gonna start telling people that stuff and see what happens no I actually tested this in a mini crash that we had with the old spill in 2010 I made more money I made 150,000 that year I made 100,000 that year before I made 50 more thousand in one of the scariest years we've ever had right that to me was like my real aha moment in real estate that was when I thought I've got something figured out like I don't know I may have it all figured out and everything but I've got something big here and all I did was simply the same thing I was doing contacting property owners you're an information provider real estate agents are information providers it was my job during that time to inform people what's going on with the old spill and the seeds or something I could do to help they wanted to dump their condos I listed and sold condos for dirt cheap prices should have bought them and those people were scared they got out should they have gotten out maybe maybe not whatever it was my job to help them do what they wanted to do it's not my job to question what they want to do right I think a lot of agents try to put their two cents in on why a client should do something they're looking at a house and you think now I think you should get in this house over here shut up let them buy the house you know what I'm saying a lot of agents do that a lot of people in this room do that I know don't do it let the client do what they want to do regardless of what you think I don't do the market tell them we'll negotiate the best do your thing it's not a decision for people I don't think not in my opinion so anyway I make more money during the year the whole spiel this is my aha moment I had always wanted to be a remax and this was my opportunity I didn't want to go because I was scared of the desk feet but it's like the desk feet is consistent it's every month I didn't want to go there until I knew that my income was going to be consistent I had to line up the consistency of my income with the consistency of the desk feet before I took the desk feet on so when I made more money that year that was the moment I realized I could do this regardless of what happens to the market I'm moving I went to remax, I combined what I was doing with the biggest brand in real estate and it really started gaining momentum 2014 Assault 100 properties I was the number one remax agent in Alabama that year that was 600,000 commissions the next year I wanted to do a million that had been 2015 I wanted to do a million and I put this huge plan together I put all the pieces the pieces in place how many people needed to call how many are listening, how many there, how many there I had it all drawn up I didn't make per day, per week how many listings I wanted to get all this stuff and I got to work January 1st, 2015 January, February by March I'm looking at my yearly track record here and it looks like I'm going to make the same amount of money this year as I made last year I'm doing $50,000 a month again when I'm trying to do 80 what's wrong with me right really upset I became depressed to a certain extent I don't really get depressed but I was like that curiosity side of me was like what's wrong let's search for the answers I got back on my reading I was reading, I was watching, I was studying I was googling I was googling the top agents in the country like 800 million a year and stuff and reading all this stuff and that led me down a trail that made me hire a coach I hired a coach probably April, 2015 and I wanted to know how do I make a million dollars right I think there's three different reasons why somebody needs a coach they either don't know what they're doing at all they need to know the fundamentals, the basics they don't understand anything or maybe they know what to do, they just need some accountability to make them do it or maybe they're good there maybe they know what to do and they're accountable to themselves but they have some kind of mental thing going on that's holding them back so I hired this coach thinking I'm accountable mentally stable I don't have to worry about that I got to be doing something wrong fundamentally so I hired the coach and said give it to him I had that coach for four months and then I fired it was a thousand dollars a month was that I was heading in the right direction I was doing all the right things but you got to be patient there's a place in life when there's people who are really hungry really ambitious really wanting but they never quite achieve the goals that they want because they're always moving it up a little further it's like a carrier, they're always moving it and they're never happy they're always unhappy because they're never where they want to be because they keep moving the target then there's the people who are super satisfied, super happy who will never amount to be anything they're dissatisfied in life they're not going to do anything but they're happy what I realize is there's a happy medium and that's where I live ever since whatever month that was in 2015 this is where I live I live in complete happiness but at the same time super motivating do I move the goal all the time? yes, but you got to be happy where you're at dude, you got to love the process you can't just you know have that hunger, have that drive but don't forget why you're doing it don't forget that it doesn't need to steal your happiness from you right? and when you can combine being happy with being motivated now you're at a whole other level you'll start doing YouTube videos and posting on Instagram you'll start doing free coaching start writing books, start speaking to people in Miami you'll start doing all kinds of crazy things but that's what I realize with that coach is that I was doing all the right things I needed to be happy with where I was keep doing what I'm doing and be patient I think there's four keys to success you got to believe you got to work hard you got to adapt and you have to be patient and what I found is the people that there's a lot of people that believe everybody believes right? but out of the whole group of people that believe very few of those people work hard and out of this little group of people who believe and work hard very few of those people are also adapt we'll try things, see what works see what doesn't work, try to figure things out and out of that even smaller group of people that believe work hard and adapt even fewer are also patient I can talk to anybody in this room for two to five minutes if you're not as successful or as successful as you want to be and I can tell you which of these four things you're lacking in, because this is it you either don't really believe you're not really working hard you're doing the same thing over and over again or maybe you're doing everything right but you're just not patient because things take time does that make sense? I guess I'll wrap it up with this and then I want to take questions then I want to take questions because I think most of the value is going to be in the Q&A I think a lot of other things that you guys want to know and a lot of other people here are going to be within your questions and that's where I'm going to get really high I sold 100 properties in 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 I don't care because I wasn't trying to do that I was trying to help people so forget about your results your goals, like at the end of the year it doesn't matter don't focus on the results focus on your daily actions focus on your daily actions and how many people that you can try to help focus on how many people you're trying to get in front of to help not how many properties you're going to sell not how many listings you're trying to get just focus on the people market share is not how many listings you have how many closings you did it is not market share to me we all trade stocks on Wall Street on the future earnings of companies I trade stocks or market share of real estate agents on their future earnings and to me their future earnings are how many real relationships that they have in place with property owners in the area so to me market share is whoever owns the market share doesn't own amount of transactions this year because if a top producer sells 500 properties this year but this other no name agent has more relationships with property owners in the area he's going to smash that big guy the next year he owns the market share so I love you guys thank you guys so much for coming in