 Have you ever wondered why some real estate agents make success look so easy? It's just like they were born to do this. Everything just goes crystal super smooth, every single transaction, and nothing ever seems to go wrong. You know, you see the big names like Ryan Serhan, Josh Altman, and even, like, your local market, you know, you've got your top agents that just make the business look so easy. And then on the other hand, you've got a huge group of agents that make the business seem really extremely difficult. Now, you get in the business and you think it's going to be great, and then you run into all kinds of... You think it's... You think it's brick walls, but it's really just road bumps. It's really just road bumps. So that's what I'm going to talk about today, right? How some agents make it seem so easy, and yet in reality, 90% of agents fail and fall right on their face when they get in the business. So I want to talk about these six lies that real estate agents believe, especially when they get into the business and even throughout their entire career, because we're programmed to believe these things. We're programmed to believe that the business is this way. And as we come into the business, we're very influenced in the very beginning, right? What we learned in that first few months, the first six months, the first year, even two years, it really molds the way we perceive the business. And in my opinion, we're being programmed around a bunch of lies in the industry. And that's what this video is about. I want to clear up a couple of these things and maybe give you just a little different perspective on a few of these things so that you can go out there and understand that, OK, there's not just one way to do this. There's actually several different ways to do this and one of the other ways may even be better than what I've been learning the entire time. So hopefully this video will help you maybe spark the beginnings of you unlearning some bad perspectives that we have on the business. That's the goal, so let's dive right into it. So the first lie, right, as a real estate agent that we believe, OK, and this goes, you know, for new agents and experienced agents. But the first lie is that for a new agent, you hear so much that a new agent, when they come in, they need to join a team. They need to join a team. And this is not going to be a dig on teams. OK, a lot of people are like, Ricky, you're so against teams. And, you know, you were a single agent for so long. And yeah, I was a single agent for a long time. I sold 100 properties a year for eight years in a row. Single agent, one assistant. I tried to build a team twice. And, you know, could I go build a team now? Yes. But I understand how to do it correctly now and I understand how much work. I understand how much work building a team is. And that's not where I am in my career. There are much easier paths to produce more and less time for me at this point rather than going and starting from scratch, building a team, because when you go build a team, you're literally starting over at zero, all right? Because a lot of people think I'm an agent. I'm succeeding. Now, the next step is to build a team. And in reality, they have a full-time job being an agent. And now they don't realize it. But being a team leader is a full-time job. So now they're giving themselves two full-time jobs. And they're trying to juggle two full-time jobs. And most people who do this fall right on their face. Because they don't realize what's all involved in actually building a team. Now, going back to new agents, let's just talk about that for just a second. Because here's where the problem is for me with this entire thing, OK? And this is why I believe this is a lie that we believe, especially in the beginning of our career. So we come in and we're like, oh, we want to learn the business. We're a new agent. We don't know anything. Let's join one of these big, high-producing teams and we'll learn the business, OK? So the new agent or maybe somebody that's struggling, you're one, two years in. You're struggling. You're like, OK, I tried this single agent thing. Maybe I just need to go be on a team, you know, I'll throw in the towel and give that a try. Give up some of my commission and maybe learn something. And maybe that's an even exchange. Most teams, this isn't every team, OK? But teams that operate like this is what I'm talking about. And this is most teams. Most teams, the new agent comes in their entire goal, their entire goals to come in, learn as much as they can from the team and then go out and be their own agent. That's their goal. Their goal is to eventually do it on their own. Their goal is not to stay on the team forever. So their goal is to learn and then move on. Once they've learned what they need to learn to go do it on their own, their intentions are to move on, OK? The team's goal is the exact opposite. The team's goal is to retain that agent forever. So you see the goal of the agent and the goal of the team do not match up. And this builds a lot of resentment over time because the team, you know, advertised coming in and come on over here, would teach all kinds of stuff. You're going to make a lot of money. Everything's going to be awesome. Come to find out they don't learn what they need to learn to go be their own agent. Because, OK, because of the model that the team has, the team is set up to take care of the legion, the admin, and the marketing. The team does that for the agent. Why? So the agent could just be the machine showing the properties, making the calls, following up, doing whatever the role is that the team needs them in. So they learn that role, but they don't learn these other roles of a real estate business that they're going to need in order to go be their own agent. So they don't learn legion. They don't learn marketing. And they don't learn admin. They've got somebody handling the paperwork for them. They've got somebody handling marketing. They've got somebody just sending them leads. They don't know where the leads came from. The team members are just like, OK, I got leads. I'm going to go call them. My job is to call these leads and make these deals. And that's great because you're developing the skill that you need to go out there and communicate with people, figure out what they need, what they want, showing the properties, listing appointments, whatever it is that you're doing. And those skills are needed 100%. But you're not getting the full 100% of the knowledge you needed to go do this on your own. So over time, you realize, I can't even leave the team because I'm dependent on the team for legion, admin, and marketing. And so now we're kind of like, we have learned some things, but now when we leave the team a year or two later, we're right back to square one on those activities. We didn't really learn legion. We didn't really learn admin. We didn't really learn marketing. What I would love to see is a team that is more of an incubator. So what happens is, is the future top producers come in. The future top producers that are ground zero, they haven't sold anything. They're struggling, whatever. The ones that are ambitious enough to go do the things they need to do to become a top producer, a top 10 agent in their MLS, those future top 10 agents, they come in, they learn everything from the team, and they leave. They learn what they need. OK, I've learned all I can learn here. They move on. So the team becomes a stepping stone for the future top producers, all right? And then the ambitious agent comes in, the future top producer, they learn everything. They go on, and the team leaders sitting here like, I got them started. I helped them. I got them to a certain point, you know, but the team member went on and did their own thing, and the team leader really didn't get any credit for everything they did in the very beginning stages for that agent. Then on the flip side, you've got the, let's just call them non, I don't want to say non-ambitious. They're comfortable, right? They're comfortable being on the team, giving a big split, letting the team handle all the legion admin and marketing forever. They're comfortable in that spot. That's fine. But what you become is, as a team leader in that traditional model, is a stepping stone for the future top producers and basically a team full of comfortable agents, comfortable agents. You know, I don't know about you, but like I got to be around the highest level people. So if I'm around people who are just comfortable all the time, that's going to bring me down to where I'm going to start to feel comfortable. Like, yeah, I'm not going to feel comfortable. I'm going to feel uncomfortable in that situation, and I'm going to feel a lot of pressure on my shoulders to get out of that situation. It's kind of what happened to me a couple of times. Nevertheless, this is the first lie that I think that we start to believe is, A, we got to join a team so that we can learn the business. Yeah, you learn some of the business, but you don't learn what you think you're going to learn, and the team's going to make you dependent on certain things, hoping you stay forever. And then on the team leader side, you've got the future top producers coming and leaving, coming and leaving, coming and leaving. Back in the 90s, I think, is when teams kind of started. And then as it grown over the decades, it turned into, oh, you got to go build a team so you can kind of create that passive income to where you can go out and have this sellable asset. You can sell the team later. There's been people that have achieved these goals with massive amounts of work. You know, I was a single agent, and just my market in particular, because I was so efficient, right? I was working 20 hours a week selling 100 properties a year. A lot of people don't believe that, but that's what was happening. I was working 20 hours a week. How did I do that? I built a powerful brand. They're making so many calls and doing so many weekly emails and never missed brand. So there's your million dollar tip for the day right there. But outside of that, people don't believe that I worked 20 hours a week. I was literally living the life that team leaders want to live in terms of selling all these properties, but only work in half a week. And I wasn't sleeping the other half. I was building other businesses, like the business I'm working on right now, building my brand, building my coaching business, et cetera. But nevertheless, I was living the life that most team leaders want to live as they switch from being single agents to team. They're like, I'm going to go build this thing. I'm going to have passive income on other agents and all this. I was living that life as a single agent. So there's another lie is that you have to go out and build a team to create this thing so that you have passive income. You don't have to work so hard. You have to work twice as hard because you have two full-time jobs now. And it takes many, many, many years of being a team leader to get it to the point. You have to go through a lot of different employees and agents to find those special people that can really make this thing work. It's a lot of work and you're dependent on a lot of people. I didn't like any of that. I'd rather work less, keep all the money and outsell every team. I outsold every team in my market, every team. There were teams with 20 agents. I was outselling them by myself, not even breaking a sweat because I am efficient. Efficiency is the key. Leverage is the key. Understanding what moves the needle, going all in on the few activities that really are the highest producing activities. 20% of your activities produce 80% of your results. 80% of your activities are garbage. They're not moving the needle, right? 80% of your activities produce 20% of your results, right? If you can squeeze that down to where you're only doing, say, 10% of the 80% that doesn't move the needle and go more all in on the 20% that is, that's where I was living. That's where I was living as an agent. I was all in on the 20% that moved the needle. And I'd worry about anything else. So I could go on and on about this. Again, I'm not digging on teams. Glory to the teams. That's like, you know, kudos to the teams. Congratulations to the teams. I know a team that sold 8,000 transactions a couple years ago. Expansion team in a lot of different states. They've got like crazy amount, hundreds and hundreds of agents. Awesome. That's awesome. You created a company within a company. Might as well go do your own brokerage, right? Anyway, it's not digging on teams. It's just like, can I open your mind up to a different perspective? And like realize that what we, what we see and what it is is really not the same and that there are many different ways to skin a cat and nothing's right or wrong. That's what I say. Like go build a team. I'm not telling you it's wrong. I'm just saying, think about what I'm saying, right? And hopefully this will help you if you are thinking about building a team or even being a single agent to understand and maybe tweak your business model a little bit. Be an incubating team. Be a team that does teach agents everything and say, listen, when you come in hey, if you want to stay here forever, great. I'm going to teach you everything you need to know to where you can go out and be your own agent because I know that's what you want to do. If you end up staying here forever, awesome. If you ever want to decide to leave, awesome. That's what I'm here for. I'm here to help you grow and how to help you support you and whatever you think is best for you. That's what I would love to see a team do. All right. Onto the second lie here. Buying leads. Buying leads. So in 2021, 200 million leads were sold to agents. 200 million. There were 6 million transactions in 2021. Okay. So think about that. And you know that the 6 million transactions, that's 2% of the total leads that were sold. And you know that the total leads that were sold didn't buy houses that year. So the amount of people, right? Let's just say 1%, right? 1% would be, what, 2 million? I don't know. I think that's on the high end. 1% of the leads that were sold, 200 million, bought something. And you bought 200 million and you're spending a lot of money on it. Okay. And if you really look at it, the price of leads have went up and the qualities went down. Case in point, 200 million leads and 6 million deals. The quality of leads have went down and the prices went up. And now a lot of these companies are charging a referral fee. You know, they're charging 35%. You know, they're not charging you, you know, upfront fees like they used to. You know, they're charging you a percentage on the back end. You know, it's getting worse. It's not getting better. And when you think about leads, leads are humans in the market. They're everywhere. The leads that you're paying so much money for are, and think about 200 million. There's 350 million people in the US. You take out teenagers and babies. Did they sell you every single person's information in the country? In 2021, I think they did. They literally like took everybody's information and just divvied it up and said, we're going to sell all this and pretend like it's leads. I guess. Think about that. 350 million people in the US, 200 million of those were sold to us as agents. And we bought them when we could just get their information for a penny on RedX or we could look them up on whitepages.com or we could DM them on Instagram. We could doorknock them for free. We could call them as a for sale. We can meet them at Walmart. We can meet them at a networking event, Facebook friends, sphere of influence. We have more free leads than we do paid leads. And they're the same quality, same quality, right? And it's mind boggling. It's mind boggling. So why do we buy leads? We buy leads because we're scared to call people because we have an anxiety over rejection. So we try to get around calling people cold calling. Let's call it cold calling people. So we spent a lot of money on leads because we're scared of people are going to get mad at us and reject us. So we spent a lot of money on leads just to have those leads. We pay for reject us or mean to us because that does happen. You pay for leads and then the people are mean to you reject you happens all the time. So you can't get around this. It's mind boggling the people, the agents to try to get around calls spending thousands of dollars on leads just to turn right around and call them. It's wild. And so they end up calling them. And at the end of the day, the reason why I built my business so fast, the reason why I outpaced the growth of my business outpaced every agent in my market. And the reason being is because I understood that it was about conversations. How many conversations I'm having with the quality of those conversations? Can I make this people feel comfortable with me enough to do business with me now or later whenever they decide it's time to do so? I understood that. And the more people I have conversations with and take them through that process, the bigger my business would be. And it all starts with the conversation. And so for me, I was like, well, just give me a list of everybody in my market that own the type of property I want to sell. I'm going to go ahead and have those conversations right now today. And everybody else was buying leads, waiting on the leads to come in to trickle in, trickle just here and there, lead here and there, for a month, five a month, 10 a month, 30 a month, whatever. And they were literally getting like, whatever, let's just call it 500 leads a year. They're paying for 500 leads a year, something like that. Let's say 50 leads a month from some source just using round numbers here. They were getting 50 leads a month from somewhere. I'm sorry, a year, 50 a month, 500 in a year and paying God awful amount for these leads and having those conversations and having, you know, they're selling 10, 15, 20, 30 properties, whatever, right? But they're getting 500 near and I'm calling 500 in a week. So, so think about it. I was doing a year worth of their work because I measure work and I was a real estate agent. How many conversations you're having with possible prospects? How many conversations you're having with possible prospects? And I was having as many conversations as they were having in a year in a week. So every week that went by was me doing a year worth of everybody else's work because for me, it wasn't about like how many hours I'm grinding. It was about how many conversations I'm having. And if I can have those conversations now, it's like success and failure. The quickest way to fail is to do what's easy now. And the quickest way to succeed is to do what's hard now. And the reason I was working 20 hours a week is because I put all that hard work in for 5, 6, 7 years, grinding, grinding, grinding, making those calls until I built the brand through the weekly email in the back end that I didn't make any calls anymore. These people called me and I was flooded with people who wanted to buy and sell and I was selling 100 properties a year, literally just servicing, right? Just answer my phone, OK, write it off or negotiate, go to a closing over here, show one or two properties over here. I wasn't working hard at all, but I was selling 100 properties a year. But that was because I did what's hard in the beginning, what people don't want to do. So that's what I'm trying to tell you. Like for Red X, for example, I'll put a link in the description, you can get a discount, right? For $3.99, you can get their bundle where they give you everything, right? And you can get different, if you just want to branch it off and get different products, get different products. But like with GeoLeads Plus, pick a neighborhood, you get 7500 property owners of your choice in the market. If you buy it by itself, it's like $130, $150, something like that. 7500 property owners of your choice, you pick it. You can pick a listing and with Red X, you can find, it's a four-bedroom. You can pick, you can find all the property owners around it. They have three bedrooms and call them all and say, hey, I see you've got a three-bedroom. Would you like a four? And I'll get into that in just a second, a little further on the next thing here. But I want to kind of talk, finish this buying leads part out so that you understand. You buying leads as you trying to cop out on conversations or what's hard, when you're going to have to do it anyway and all you're doing is trickling your way to hopefully getting successful and really just being an average agent. I know there's a lot of teams, they'll spend a million bucks a year, a million bucks a year on leads. And they sell hundreds of properties. They sell so many properties. But when you're operating on that level, you're paying out half to the agents, you're buying all the zillily, what are you left with? You know? I'd rather just handle my clients, make a million bucks, keep it all, invest in real estate, do other things. I can even take that to 2 million. The thing is, is when I made a million bucks, I was closing 40 million a year. And this is back in 2017-18. Prices are up like, I don't know, 80% since then? Okay, something like that. So just the sheer fact of price increases, if I were still doing the 100 deals, I'd be making close to 2 million a year. Doing the same amount of work, 2 million a year. So a million back then in the 40 million, yeah, that was a million in commissions. But in today's market, with the word prices have went since I stepped out of the business, I would be doing 2 million a year. So it's not like you can't take this, especially with how prices go up. It's not like you can't take this to a 2 million dollar a year business depending on your market. And if prices do crash, hey, how many people do you have right now in your database who are waiting on prices to come down? You know how much of a flurry it would be if prices come down? We have more pent-up demand than we've ever seen in history. Pents up demand from trade-up sellers who are dying to move but can't. And that number is growing every day. Leaps and bounds. You've got first-time home buyers more than we've had since the Baby Boomers. Like 30 years ago, it's insane the amount of pent-up demand, the demographic of people who want to own homes over the next 10 years. And it's going to be glorious over the next decade when you guys see how the market rebounds from here. This is the bottom. It's time to go all in to expand your influence in the market, period. That's what I did in 2008, and that's what got me to 100 deals. I went all in in 2008. If you're not all in right now, not worried about the market, because average agents say, oh, nobody's doing anything, so what's the point in making calls, doing letters, posting videos, or trying to prospect at all? No point. Nobody's doing anything. That's because you're focused on now. I'm focused on my career. I'm trying to get to a million dollars as soon as possible, and I'm going to take advantage of the market resurging. We're going to hit 7 million transactions, existing home sales within the next decade. There's going to be a year. I'm going to say that's impossible. No, back in 2005, it happened. If it happened in 2005, a lot of people don't realize that. We had 6 million in 2021, and people think that was the top. That was the boom. That's the record. No, it wasn't. 2005 was the record. 7 million. If we did it again, if we did it then, we can do it again, and we have way more demographics and data and analytics on our side that it will happen, and the pent-up demand that's brewing right now is unlike anything you've ever seen. It's all in right now to talk to as many people as you can to build your influence in the market. You're going to miss the boat, and when the market does resurge, you're going to get back out there and try to be busy to try to take advantage of it, but it's going to be too late to really take advantage of it because that time to really take advantage of it is now, before it happens, to make sure people know who you are so that when it happens, they call you when they're ready to do something. It's going to be a perfect storm between interest rates, prices, inventory, and demand all coming together. Right now, inventory is low. Interest rates are up. Prices are up. Demand is pent up, but when it all releases, it's going to be a perfect storm and it's going to be glorious, and you're going to wish you were listening to me when I'm talking about expanding influence in your market, making your calls, doing your weekly email, doing the things that you need to do before I get to the next slide. I just want to say, it's zero-to-diamond.com, my coaching program. I do a weekly call every Monday for everybody. It's $100 a month, but we're doing a seven-day free trial right now. You can get in there and see what it's all about and come to one of the Monday calls for free. For free, go to zero-to-diamond.com right now. Start your free trial. Get in there. There's the course. There's the scripts, the email templates. All my weekly email templates are there. Get in there. Dive in. Immerse yourself in that. There's agents making hundreds of extra thousands and even—there's people that have made millions extra off of what they've learned in this course, and it will change your life. Zero-to-diamond.com. The next lie is that to get listings, okay, this is what we've been programmed to think. To get listings, all right, the only way to get listings, right, is either you know them and they call your referral, et cetera, but the only way to go out and actually stack listings is to call sellers and ask them if they consider selling or tell them that you have a buyer, whether they consider selling their property, have they ever thought about selling, the market's really good, would you sell if I could get you this price, all that stuff. And this is what we've been programmed to think and this is why a lot of people don't do it because you don't feel comfortable asking somebody for something because basically what you're doing when you do that is you're saying, hey, Mr. Seller, call me out of the blue. All right, you don't know me. I don't know you. Okay, we don't even know each other. All right, but let me ask you something. Just right off the bat here, would you sell your house so I can make some money? Because that's what I'm doing here. I'm trying to make some money. I'm here for me, not here for you. I'm here for me. I'm gonna make some money. This is the impression that we give when we do this. This is the impression that we give when we call sellers we don't know and ask them if they consider selling, if they would sell. Now, I understand there are certain situations where you have a buyer that's just like got money burning a hole in their pocket and you have to go out there and say, listen, this is a serious inquiry. You know, I know you probably get this all the time, but this is a serious inquiry. I have a buyer who has money burning a hole in their pocket and they want to be in your neighborhood. I understand that there are situations where you do that. I'm not against it at all. I've done it a lot in my career, made a lot of money doing it. But what I'm saying is that's not the only way and thinking that this is the only way programs us, especially if we're not the type of people who want to get into confrontational situations or that you have an anxiety about rejection, et cetera, it makes you veer away from doing this activity and literally this activity is the pinnacle of getting you worried. In my opinion, everything works. I mean, listen, go cold deal people on Instagram. Go do handwritten letters. I'm a big component of handwritten letters, made millions, handwritten letters. There's so many different ways to do this, but it all comes back to conversation. Even when you do the DMs on Instagram, even when you buy the Zilla leads, even when you do the handwritten letters, you have to talk. The next step is to talk to them, have a real conversation. So you can't get around that part. So that's what we have to kind of step back, reverse engineer ourselves into the situation and put ourselves in a position and give ourselves a perspective that will allow us to feel good about taking the action necessary to really ramp things up. Because remember, I want to do in a year, I want to do in a week the amount of work that every other agent in my market is doing in an entire year. That's how I became the number one agent in my market and that's how you have to think if you want to become the number one agent in your market. So it all comes back to conversation. So when I realized that, I was like, okay, boom, there's the missing piece. There's the magic bullet. There's the shiny penny. Have conversations with people and they're like, if I'm going to take it that far, let me go ahead and have conversations with the number one prospects out there, the people that own the properties that I want to sell. So this is where things got very interesting. So now I look back and I realize I was programmed to believe that the only way to get listings is to call sellers and ask them if they consider selling. And now I realize that's not the only way. It's actually the, not the worst way. I'm not going to say it's the worst way, but there are much better ways to do it. Now, let me take you through this process because I already mentioned this earlier. When we do it that way, we're calling them to get them to do something. We're calling them to give them something. We're calling to see if we can get them to give them to take something from them, which is what? A listing. This is what's on our mind, a listing. And so we're calling them to see if they'll give us a listing. If we can get them to give it to us, get them to do something. And there's really no upfront value happening or any reason for them to really connect with us. They're nice people, most of them. They'll say, oh, you know, yeah, we're not, you know, we're really not in the market to sell, you know, things anyway, and this kind of thing. And then you get into a conversation, you get to know them a little bit, and then good things happen down the road, happens all the time. But where I'm going with this is kind of what I mentioned earlier. If instead I'm not calling to see if they'll do anything or see if they'll give me something. If instead I'm calling to offer them something of real value, okay, then next thing you know, all of a sudden, they open up to me and they tell me everything that they do want to do. Now, let me give an example because I mentioned it earlier. I have a, let's say I have a four bedroom, all right, in a subdivision. I can look up on RedX and filter out all the three bedrooms and lower and have it literally like that. Snap of a finger, whole subdivision or even outside a whole mile radius, whatever. You get all the homes that are in the area and I could say, boop, three bedrooms are lower, bam, filters out all the four bedrooms and now I have this list and I can hit dial. Boom, I can start dialing them one at a time or multiple lines and I can call these people and I can say, hey, how you doing? You know, I'm enjoying the day. Here's who I am. Here's what company I'm with. Here's where I am. How you doing today? Cool me to. I'm enjoying the days and the gorgeous. Listen, I don't want to take too much of your time, okay, but I see you have a three bedroom here over here on this road or subdivision or whatever. And do you need a four bedroom? Because I got a really nice one right down the road. I'd really love to show you. Now, now what happens? What happens is, is that now I'm not calling to see if they'll sell their house. Now I'm calling to offer them a better life. Ooh, I'm offering them a better quality of life, a nicer house, a newer house, a bigger house, a better view on the water, whatever it is. Let's say I have a house on the water, call all the houses off the water and say, I see you have a house that's not on the water. I've got a really nice one on the water. Have you ever thought about living on the water? See what they say. Just see what they say. And now where the mister or misses make your life better. We're not, we're not the mister or misses here to get a listing guy here to get a listing agent. We're here as mister. I want to make your life better. Do you need a bigger house? Did you have a baby in the last year? Are you pregnant? Did you lose a job? Get a job? Did your mother-in-law move in? Do you need a house with a mother-in-law suite? What do you need? Do you need anything? I'm here to help you, right? This is what I do. I'm here to make your life better. And so I hope, I hope you're catching what I'm putting down here because you don't have to call from a what can you do for me perspective, but you can call with a what can I do for you perspective when you do. Listen, chances that they want the house you're calling about are pretty slim, but the chances they might want to do something, probably not that bad. It might not be a complete 50-50, but it's probably a pretty good chance. And listen, the probability they want to do something at some point in the future, really high. Really, really high. And when you think about this, I'll go a little further. If you're in this business and you plan on being in this business for 20 years, 15 years, 30 years, 10 years, whatever it is, five years, doesn't matter. You look at how long you're planning on being in this business. You look at the length of your proposed career and every prospect you talk to, you think, how many deals is this person going to do over the course of my 15-year career? How many deals are they going to personally do? How many referrals are they going to give out? And how many of those referrals are going to do multiple deals and refer more people out? And then you start to think, oh, my goodness. This is a breakthrough because you start to realize that every single prospect, whether they want to buy or sell a house today or not, could be worth anywhere from 10 to 20 to 30 to 50 to 100 deals to you over the life of your career. I'm just giving you a different perspective. I'm just helping you realize that there are different ways to think about this. And if you think about things in the right way, it takes a lot of the hustle and grind out of this. When you start to realize that what moves the needle and what needs to happen, because let's take it into the perspective of you're calling just to get listings or you're calling just to do deals or you're just calling to try to handle objections and get them to sign paperwork or set the appointments or whatever. And it turns them off. Wait a minute. This person is going to be possibly responsible for 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 deals to you through repeat business referrals and referrals of referrals of referrals of referrals. They could be worth 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 deals to you over the life of your career and you're turning them off because you're trying to do a deal today. You're going to trade 100 deals for one today that you don't even get. It doesn't make any sense. It took me a long time to understand this as well. It took me a long time to understand this, but when I got it, oh, my life completely changed. The way I communicated with people, my perspective on what the objective actually was behind the conversations, what I was doing to nurture these relationships, the time I put into the weekly email to make sure they knew that I cared about them through it and just the way that I talked to people. When I came back in the business, because when I lost everything in the crash, it was literally because I lived the way I'm telling you not to live. It's literally because I was chasing deals and when you chase deals in the market crashes, you crash. But when you don't chase deals, you chase people for lifelong relationships who want to do business with you forever. When the market crashes, you flourish. And it took me having to lose everything to realize this. So when I came back, I started communicating with prospects second time around. The conversations are totally different. I could tell they cared about me. I could tell that I cared about them. It was more of a family, extended family type vibe. And I was just stacking deals and I was making so much money back then. It was just like heaven's sense. Anyway, good stuff. Let me know in the comments. Is this video helping you? Let's see what I got. I still got three more lives here and I don't want to take too much longer on these. So I kind of breezed through these. I've already laid down a lot of stuff today, but let's kind of dive into these last three and I'll let you guys get out of here. The success of your business has anything to do with the market. This is big. A lot of agents feel like if the market is down, their business is down. And the only reason it is is because they slow down with the market. It's the only reason that their business suffers because they slow down. Again, they come back, they retreat back to, well, if nobody's doing anything, what's the point? What's the purpose? Why would I go out here and make calls or make videos or knock on doors or even try to talk to anybody because nobody's doing anything? Well, the first problem with that is you're stereotyping everybody in your market. You're stereotyping every single person in your market. The first thing you have to realize is that closings are happening every single day. So when you look in your MLS, you can go back to 2008. You can go back during the pandemic. You can go back any time you want to, any time. There's not a day in history that there weren't closings happening every single day. There wasn't. It didn't happen. And so when you realize that, you have to believe that closings are going to happen every day for the rest of your life, regardless of market conditions. And so if you sit around thinking nobody's doing anything, then my question is, are you just closing all these deals that are happening every single day? Yes, are we down? Does it fluctuate? Are some years better than others in terms of transactions and prices, etc.? Sure. Never goes to zero. And there's always plenty, plenty for you to do. People think there's a scarcity of business out there. And I think about it as an Apple, and I learned this from Myron, one of my mentors. He said an Apple, everybody thinks there's a scarcity of business, life and money. There's not. It's so abundant. It's not even funny. And a good illustration of this is an Apple. You take an Apple and you take an Apple off the tree and you think, okay, there goes that Apple. But then you open the Apple and there's seeds. You open the Apple and there's seeds. You took an Apple off the tree. It's off the market. It's no longer available for anyone else. But yet, that Apple, you open it up and there's seeds. What do the seeds do? Each seed, let's say there's four, five, six seeds, it grows a whole tree of apples. And all those apples are full of seeds that grow more trees and more trees and more trees, all from the one Apple. So when you take something out of play of the market, when you take a seller off the market, you know, and list their property, now nobody else can list that property. Or you take money, right? You make money over here, so, you know, there's no more money. There's less money over there for these people, etc. Not true. Not true. It's so abundant, it's not even funny. And so when you think about this and you think about the fact that closings are going to happen every single day for the rest of your life, you have to realize, and I hope you realize in this video that your business can be fluctuated by the market, but it can never be taken out. If you're making a million a year and the market takes a big hit, you can go down to $800,000, $700,000, $900,000, sure! You make a $500,000 a year, you can go down to $300,000, $400,000, sure! Not going to go down to zero unless you quit, unless you quit doing what you needed, unless you quit working. You know? That's just the way it is. And at the same time, the market helps the business expand as the market re-expands. And what's funny about this before I move on is when the market re-expands, which is going to happen within the next however long, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 years, whenever it is, when it re-expands, it multiplies your business so many times. It took my business from 30 deals to 100 deals when it happened in 2014. So it 3xed, 4xed my business, right? But when the market pulled back, it only hurt it by 20%. So when the market re-expands, that's your biggest opportunity to explode your business if you take advantage before the expansion happens by expanding your influence and retargeting and remarketing these people. I say do it through a weekly email. But it multiplies your business, but it doesn't take it away at the same rate. It only takes it away like 20% or whatever from whatever that peak was. And that's what's very interesting to me. And when you start to realize this, you can start to play this out how your career is going to lay out. And I hope you realize this is your biggest opportunity right now to expand that influence and take advantage of what's coming soon. All right. So the market doesn't have anything to do with your success as an agent. Closings are happening every single day. And, you know, don't slow down with the market. Lean into it. Knowing that, okay, even though I might be putting a lot of work and only closing a month right now, that's okay because I'm picking up 200 new possible prospects for the future every month that will pay off in millions of dollars. Okay. The next slide is that it's easy. 90% of agents fail. Why do they fail? Well, they come in and they think it's going to be easy. So they come in, they're on this high, you know, they're, you know, to the moon, new job, you know, sky's the limit. I'm my own boss. I don't have as much money as I want. I can set them on hours, freedom and all that stuff. And they come in and after a couple weeks, they start to become a little bit frustrated because there's this mountain of knowledge that they realize they're not going to learn in a day. And then a couple months goes by, they become disappointed. So they go on this big high, then they find this frustration level, then they hit this low disappointment because they've worked their ass off more than likely. Maybe they've worked hard, maybe they haven't, but they've worked hard. And they, they haven't sold anything. So they hit this disappointment level. So it's really high, high. They get this really low, low. And at that point, most agents quit. They kind of give up, they kind of, they may stay in the business for a little bit, but that kind of hurt them so bad they couldn't stomach the ups and downs enough to hang in there. So they kind of slowly retreat, or maybe they quit right then. Whereas the future top producers, they get that level of disappointment and they say, oh, okay. They look around and they say, well, yeah, this is harder than I thought it was going to be. But look, this agent over here is crushing it. This agent over here is crushing it. If they can do it, I can do it. There's no doubt. I'm going to get back on the horse. And they do. They get back on the horse. They ride another high. They're excited. And this high isn't as high as that first high. And then they experience another low. The low isn't as low as that last low. And what happens is you get this number where there's really high, and it starts to level out over a little while. And you start to kind of get it and you start to understand when to become excited. You start to become, you start to know when to get disappointed. You start to realize after you lose a couple listings and stuff, you know, how this game really works. So, yeah, it's not easy. And like I said, the best formula for success is to do what's easy now. And the best formula for success is to do what's hard now. If you want to fail, do what's easy. If you want to succeed, do what's hard now, because it'll be easy later. And if you fail, it's going to be easy now, but hard later. It's the exact opposite. And that's exactly how the real estate business is. It's not easy. The last one is people think they're too young. People think they're too old. People think they're too young for the business. I got in and I was 20 years old and, you know, brokers told me I was too young and they said, did you know 90% of agents fail in this business? I said, okay. I said, that's fair. I said, but did you know 10% of agents make it in this business? And I eventually found a broker that would take me and I was on a mission to prove those brokers that doubted me wrong. But going back to this too young, too old thing, I get it all the time. Agents think, how am I going to get, you know, I'm too young? Why are they going to trust me? Why are they going to give me a shot over these experienced agents and this, that and the other? And I get it. I get the mindset, but it's a very limiting mindset. And the problem is, you've got people that say I'm too young and then on the flip side, you've got people out there saying they're too old. So it's like, who's right and who's wrong here? The people are too young. They're not too young. They're not too young to say I'm too young. And the people that are older say I'm too old. The people that are older say everybody wants a younger agent. I'm missing listings. They're going with younger agents. More energy and, you know, more pizzazz and, you know, more tech savvy and all this stuff. And the younger agents will say I'm losing out to all these older experienced agents who have all this market knowledge and have sold all these hundreds and even thousands of properties and have negotiated all these big deals and have all this money for marketing and so on and so forth. And what you have to realize is that both sides of this are wrong, dead wrong. And the point is, is that no matter where you are in your career, you can make up a story in your mind about why somebody shouldn't choose you as an agent. You know, you can make up anything. Everyone has a reason why they shouldn't be someone's agent and guess what? They lose deals because of it. Yeah, every single agent loses deals because of that thing, like the younger agents lose deals because they're young. It's true. But they also gain clients who want a younger agent. What you have to realize is that you're never going to get 100% of the prospects. I've lost, I've had more deals fall through than I've ever closed in my life. And that's a fact and I'm sure it's true that they've lost more deals than I've ever closed. So you just have to realize that it's not about being younger or old, right? It's about you taking advantage of the positives. Take advantage of the fact that you're young and have more energy and more tech savvy, etc. Take advantage of the fact that you have more time on your hands to do market research to even know more than the experts who are out there doing it. You know, when you're talking to a prospect and they're like, well, how many properties have you sold? None. But that's why you want me because I'm going to spend every waking hour on your deal. I'm going to spend eight hours a day on your deal. I'm going to sit there and watch it like a pot of boiling water. I'm going to watch your deal and I'm going to talk to every agent. I'm going to talk to every buyer. I'm going to talk to everybody. I'm going to check with all the other agents who have listings in the area. Make sure I'm on top of every little activity that happens on other listings comparable. I'm going to be keeping you informed and I'm going to, every waking hour is going to be spent on your deal. Now, if you want a hard worker that's going to spend every waking hour on your deal, I'm your guy. I'm your guy. If you're looking for Mr. Hunter Dill a year, Ricky, down the road with 20 years experience who's closed a thousand deals, you can go down there and get Ricky. That's fine with me. It doesn't matter to me either way. I'm here to help whoever wants the hardest worker in the room who's going to spend eight hours a day on their deal. If you want to go talk to Hunter Dill a year, Ricky, look at him right in the eyes and say, okay, where's my deal going to be on your priority list? Where's my deal going to be on your priority list? Is it going to be at the top? You're going to spend eight hours a day working on just my deal? Because if not, I'm going to go with Mr. Young New Aging over here. I'm going to give him a shot because he said he'd do a little less on commission and, you know, he seems very motivated and he just, I have a good feeling about him and we'll go with him. That's what's going to happen. You're going to do your first deal with somebody who takes a shot on you that you prove to them that you're confident enough and you're up for the challenge to serve them at the level that they want to be served, right? And represent them the way that they want to be represented. Remember, we're not selling on what you want. We're not selling on trying to get a listing, you know, get the best commission. We're selling on their reasons. We're selling on what they want out of this. We're selling on why they want to sell, how they want to sell, what's their terms behind what they're trying to do in their life? This is where you win and lose the game and this is where... This splits the difference between average agents and professionals. The professionals go in not caring if they get the listing. They're more concerned with the person, what they have going on in their life, what their problems are, and what the solutions they can offer will be and what they can do to help them through the situation. That's what a professional does. It's not about the listing. It's about the person. It's about serving them and their needs. And not only does that help you win the deal, you know, but more importantly, it helps you win the client for life. All right? So anyway, that's the six lies that real estate agents believe. I hope you got a lot out of this. Very information-packed video with a lot of mindset stuff and tactical things. I mean, I went into all kinds of stuff, so I hope you got a lot out of this and appreciate the time I spent to make the video. Hit the like button, click Subscribe. Let me know if there's anything in the world I can do for you. Go to zerodenyman.com and start our 7-day free trial with my coaching program, Gold Bar. And I'll see you very, very soon. Let's go. I-35 with the top down. Quit the telehater. They should get it like everybody want it.