 So, if you don't have the amount of deals that you want, you haven't put in enough work yet. Go back to the grind. If you don't have as many deals as you want, that means there are not enough people know who you are in your market, so you've got to get to work. 2008, I get back in real estate, and while I was working on that oil rig, I had every other week off, and I was living on a rig, and there's not much to do on your time off. So what did I do? I read books. I was so curious to why I failed, and why I was bankrupt, and why I went backwards in life, that I had this thirst for the answers. So I read about 100 books over a course of two years, and I realized, through a lot of things, I realized, you know, because here's one thing I'll tell you. When I did lose everything, and I was going through that moment, there were two bills that I continued to pay. You know, I didn't have rent anymore. I was living in my car. I didn't have insurance. I didn't have utilities. All right? I didn't have anything, any bills of any kind, okay, except for two things that I never quit paying for, and that was my cell phone. I've still got the same number I had that I got back in 99 or whatever year that was, and my real estate license and MLS fees. Closings happen every day, and will happen every day for the rest of your life. I really, if nothing else, guys, just please understand that and start living your life and building your business on that one key principle. Don't try to run your business based on what you think the market's going to do. Don't run your business based on what somebody says or what you think interest rates are going to do or so on and so forth. It's so funny to me that agents are having a rough time representing buyers competing against 15 other buyers right now, and they come to me and say, Ricky, how do we get these offers accepted? And in the same breath, they're telling me how they're going to go learn how to do short sales so that when the market turns, they can be on top of that market. If you guys are surviving right now, you can make it through any market. Just understand that. Let that sink in for a second. If you can make it right now, you can make it through any market. So when the market does start to turn, heck, enjoy that. Enjoy that breath of fresh air. Enjoy the pressure coming off the market a little bit and giving us some room to breathe, guys. Let me let my buyer choose against a couple listings. Let me let my sellers have something to choose from once they sell to upgrade to. Wouldn't it be amazing? Yes. Do I think it's going to happen anytime soon? I don't think so. I think we're going to be here for a minute if you ask me, but who knows? The good thing is, it doesn't matter. That's the good thing. It doesn't matter. Okay, so again, 2008 at Get Back In, I realized all this. I started building my business, founded on people instead of deals, and the conversations I started having with my prospects and clients, totally different ballgame. I could tell that they understood that I cared about them and their tone and the way they talked to me told me that they cared about me too. I felt there was a connection and from that day forward, I accumulated relationships. I was in the relationship accumulation business and I'm a data collector. I want to collect all data possible, emails, phone numbers, notes. That's what you guys should all think of yourself this year, by the way. Data collector first, real estate agent second. Every day when you wake up needs to be, can I make five new friends today? If you build a business, the way that I built the business, very simple, right? Make five friends with property owners every day, make calls from 9 to 12, and do marketing the rest of the day every day, and you do that for five to 10 years, you will be the number one agent in your market, period. So if you don't have the amount of deals that you want, you haven't put in enough work yet. Go back to the grind, and if you want more deals, if you don't have as many deals as you want, that means they're not enough people know who you are in your market. So you got to get to work whenever someone wants to see a house. That's when I show houses. Whenever someone wants to see a house, there's four things that are most important for real estate agents, four activities. These activities are above everything, and one of these four is not making calls. It's showing property, going to listing appointments, negotiating deals, and writing offers. If you're doing one of those four things, nothing else matters. This is why we're a real estate agent. If you did those four things eight hours a day, every day, then you would be the most successful real estate agent in the world. Right under those four things is making calls, and then everything else is under that in terms of order of importance. So a lot of agents get upset because they're like, Ricky, I wanted to make 100 calls a day, and I couldn't because I had to show property and they're depressed about it. And the fact is, showing property is more important than making calls. So why are you getting mad at yourself, upset with yourself? Here's the thing about social media for real estate agents. And this is a game. This is a trap that we all get in. As a real estate agent, we're in this little bitty market compared to the rest of the world. You know, let's say we're in like, you know, what's the largest city in Arkansas? You know, let's say we're there, Little Rock, or say we're in Little Rock. As big as Little Rock is, compared to the rest of the world, it doesn't even exist. And when you look at the amount of people who live in Little Rock compared to how many people are on social media, around the world, it doesn't even exist. And here you are comparing yourself to these big accounts that have tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of followers. Your market doesn't even exist on social media, basically. It's so small. I mean, if you're a real estate agent and you have a couple thousand followers, it's like, wow, yeah, that is really good. You know, if you have a couple hundred, great. It's not about the growth of followers for a real estate agent. What we want to do is bring value to people in our market through those social media channels. And it's not about the number of followers. You can't compare yourself to a Ricky, you know, where my social media is literally my personal global brand. I was a global brand. You can't compare your account in Little Rock, Arkansas, to a global brand. You know, don't use, let's outsource it because I'm not good at social media. That's not a smart play. Work social media and get good at it and then outsource it. Get your accounts up to a certain level and understand it more and then outsource it. And that way, you know what the company that's outsourcing, you know what they're up to. And you've built yourself up to a certain point and now that company can help you keep that momentum. Otherwise, you're just handing somebody a blank slate. They don't know which way to go with it. And you don't know what you're doing. So then it's a mess. It's saying everybody's scared to move. What if you went after second home buyers and investment people or absentee owners who aren't living in the property and could take 100,000 off the table right now? Wouldn't that be a smart move? Why aren't we going after those sellers who don't have to move out of the property because they're not living in it? And they could take 100,000 off, 50,000 off, 200,000 off the table while the market's up and then wait for the market to come back down in a year or two or three. Let's go after those. And then if we run into someone who has to sell, the sellers that are selling that live in their primary homes that are selling right now, okay, they're not selling because they want to. They're selling because they have to. And those sellers do exist and they need your help. So quit stereotyping the market that everybody's scared to move. There are a lot of people who are scared to move. They're scared, there's people that, a lot, most people don't want to list because there's nothing to move to and they don't want to leave money on the table. There's two reasons. They don't want to leave money on the table because they feel like the market's going up too fast and there's nothing to move to if they did sell. Now, there is a little twist to that guys. It's like, okay, the universe is telling you, okay, you don't have the results you want so you haven't put enough work in but let me add this slight twist here and that is as you're putting in all this effort looking for this result, you also have to be adapting. You also have to understand that. You can't just keep doing the same thing. Okay, the effort needs to be different every day because you're getting just 1% better every day. You learn something yesterday, you apply that 1% today to get a little, to get one more percent, right? And every day you're morphing, you're transitioning, you're turning into, right? Little by little by little, this incredible agent, and at the end of the year you look back and you're a completely different person. It's adapted effort, adapted effort.