 What's up, James? Welcome to my house, brother. Well, very, very happy to be here. I know we talked about this for a while, you know, being able to come here, interview you. We have, we've worked in two totally different industries, but very parallel stories, I think. There are a lot of similarities between you and I, not just the fact that we, you know, grew up together, went to the same high school, grew up in the same area, but just in life. And now things that have happened for us, really, and where we've gotten ourselves to, you know, a lot of people say, you know, that everybody's self-made, only the successful people will admit it. I would say that both you and I have, you know, achieved, you know, a good amount of success in what we do, but you have such an incredible story. I'm all about, you know, the stories and really, you know, there's the same facts tell, stories sell. And just hearing your story, I think it brings a lot of inspiration to a lot of people and a lot brings a lot of belief to a lot of people as well. I would love to just kind of walk through your story from, you know, starting in your industry, starting in the real estate industry and, you know, how you got to where you are now. Like, and most importantly, I think that the failures, the things that just happened that, and you've gotten through. So you've been in real estate for how long now? 17 years. Yeah. And it's been super easy the whole time, right? Yeah, just a piece of cake. Yeah. So 17 years ago when you started, tell me about how you got into it and what, you know, what you did start now? Well, basically the long story short, I went to school, went to college to, I went to four different colleges in two years. I failed a history class at University of Alabama and just decided college was not for me. I really didn't know what I wanted to do. You know, it was just kind of, you know, what's next after high school? I didn't really have a plan. So college is the next best thing. That's what you're supposed to do. So I had a scholarship to a school in Missouri, Missouri Valley for football. I went there for a year and decided that was too far of a drive for 18-year-old. I just wasn't feeling it. You know, it was like 14 hour drive. So after I came back from Thanksgiving and went back to school for finals and they came back a week later for Christmas, you know, then I'm headed back, you know, just back and forth 14 hours was just too much for me at that time. I just couldn't, I couldn't do it. So I came back to Alabama and I was going to walk on at Alabama, walk on football. And so I'm working out, you know, three times a day, running miles and lifting weights and stuff. And I was actually an invited walk in, walk on by a coach to Bose. I don't have a letter. And so I'm gearing up for that. I went, I took, I did a semester at Faulkner, which is now coastal, local community college, transfer to Alabama, gearing up to walk on. And, you know, after like 10 years of strenuous working out, my body basically just couldn't take it anymore. Like I just wasn't, I wasn't built to play at the level that, you know, true professional athletes or even just D1, you know, college players play at. So I kind of had to face that fact. And after I felt that history class and decided I wasn't going to pursue football anymore, you know, I didn't really didn't know what I was going to do. But real estate, I realized was one class, one class, you get your license, you don't have to go to school for 10 years like a doctor or lawyer, you know, it's one class, 60 hour class, and you have the opportunity to take a state test, get your license. So, you know, I'm really good at figuring out what's really efficient. You know, what move can I make that can, you know, exponentially multiply my success the fastest? You know, I've always just had a knack of, you know, what small thing can I do that will end up being huge? And I'm still doing that. That's why I do so much social media, YouTube, you know, all the things that I do are little things that produce huge results. So, you know, my mom and dad, you know, growing up down here on the beach, there's not, it's not a big city. There's not a lot of, you know, it's not Wall Street. It's not a big city. There's not a lot of like huge opportunities for either have to be a doctor, lawyer, a restaurant owner, a developer, you know, there's not, there's only a handful of really skies the limit income, you know, occupations and real estate is one of them. So, I knew a lot of real estate agents. My mom owned a hair salon and she cut a lot of their hair as I was a kid. I grew up in the hair salon answering the phone, you know, hey, this is C-Trans Hair Salon. How can I help you? And I already knew a lot of these guys. They knew me as the kid, you know, at the hair salon. So, real estate was a really good fit for me. So, I got in when I was 20, after I got out of college, four schools in two years, dropped out, got my real estate license. Still didn't know if I really wanted to do it or not because I was roofing houses with my dad. And after a couple days of that when I got back, I said, okay, I'm going to try real estate. And I got in and I thought I'm fixing to just like make it big. I'm a millionaire now. This is everything's fixing to happen. So, I quit roofing, did real estate for 30 days, sold absolutely zero and had to go back to roofing houses. So, now I'm roofing and trying to sell, trying to like start my real estate career at the same time. And that went on for eight months. It took me eight months to make my first sell. And it was a long eight months. But how many, I hate to interrupt you, but how many people do you think going eight months or even less than that would quit and be out of the game before then? Probably a lot. But, you know, what's so funny is I have a lot of newer agents reach out to me now that have been in the business for two weeks, a month, even like two or three months, really complaining, really down on their self because they don't have any sales or listings or anything. And I'm like, you know, welcome to the club, you know. We live in a microwave society. Everybody wants something. Especially now, like it's getting worse and worse, attention span is lower and people want stuff, you know, overnight. And, you know, what's so crazy is back then when I started, it took me eight months. And there's a lot of people who it still takes eight months to make their first sell. Even with the advances in technology and how far we've come, the process is still the process. Now, I have an agent in Mississippi who just finished his first year. He found me before he got a real estate. He's part of my program, sold 106 properties his first year. It took me 12 years to get to 100 deals a year. This guy did it in one year and not even in one year in his first year. And the reason being is because he took advantage, like when I started, I had to literally look up people's phone numbers by hand, type their addresses into, you know, search engines and find their phone numbers and then dial them with my finger one at a time. Now, there's technology where you can just click a few buttons, find thousands of property owners' numbers that it's even better data than it used to be, and then click another button and it just automatically starts dialing. You just sit there and talk to people. And you could get through 100, 200, 300 people, 300 dials in a day, whereas I was lucky to get 100 in. I only had like one or two days where I actually dialed 100 numbers and actually got through all of them. So what he did was is he took advantage, he saw this, and he took advantage of this technology, you know, because you think about it, it took me 15 hours to dial 100 numbers, to look up and dial 100 numbers, to look them up, that was most of the time, and then to dial them about 15 hours. So I would look them up all night and then dial them all day, during the day, look them up all night, dial them all day. That's what I did for months and months and years. Well, now you can literally click a few buttons and dial 100 numbers within an hour and a half. It's crazy, the advances in technology, how for people not, they have really no excuse not to succeed now. They don't know how good they have it, but think about it. It took me 15 hours to do what you can do now in an hour and a half. So it's 10 times faster. You can communicate with the same number of people 10 times faster than you could, you know, when I started. And so if you think about that and the fact that it took me 12 years to get to 100 deals, well, he just struck that down and did it 10 times faster and just did it in one year, you know. And so people aren't taking advantage of this, you know, they're just, it comes back to, you know, only a really small percentage of people are really going to succeed. They say 87% of agents fail in the first couple of years. They end up quitting and going back to their whatever job. And it's, you know, it comes down to, you know, most people, especially in a business like this or your industry, it's such a, you're such a business owner, like there's so many different, it's not like being an employee where you get paid to just show up or you don't, you just have one job. It's like you're everything. And most people can't, you know, handle all that. You know, they just can't handle all that. They're not built to handle everything and they're always going to make an excuse, you know. So I'm glad you just said that because I was thinking this on my way over here. And I think one of the things you and I have in common is we're not afraid of hard work. And a lot of people coming out of, and I know a lot of people do, they come out of the employer, employee arena and coming into what is really entrepreneurship. You're owning your own business, you're building your own business, you're building your own brand. And most people, when they're, they have a job, they're an employee, they're doing just enough to not get fired. And they're just, they're getting by because they're going to get a paycheck. And, you know, as long as they have that job, doing enough to keep that job, that's what they're going to do. And then if they take that same work ethic and then they go and try to start a business, it doesn't work that same way. I mean, you've got to really, really work out. Yeah. And that's one of the biggest problems I think is because when you're an employee, you get paid by the hour, you get paid to just show up. And in this business or as a business owner, you get paid on production. You don't get paid to just show up. There's plenty of people that just show up, but very few people understand that you have to show up and produce, you know, and there's a big difference. And a lot of people don't, they can't make the transition because they've been brought up to just work by the hour, show up, they get paid. It doesn't matter if they're scrolling on their phone all day, they get paid regardless. And so it is hard to, if you've been brought up a certain way and you've had things, you know, a certain way your whole life to come in and try to rearrange the way you think to become a business owner, you know, so that I think that's one of the biggest problems out there. And if we can, if we can, you know, bring up the next generation around, you know, what it takes to be a business owner and what, and the mindset behind being a producer, not just someone who shows up, you know what I mean? Then I think we can produce more successful people and we can reduce the failure rate, you know, so. I think a lot of people, you know, a lot of people may look at you and say, oh, you know, he's won a million, you know, he started doing this at the right time or he's, people make excuses why other people are successful and they're not. And I think, yeah, you may be, for every million real estate agents, you know, you may be like, you know, the number one out of a million, but you're not one in a million because of luck or because of just by chance, you're one in a million because one in a million real estate agents are willing to do what you have done and willing to go through the things you've gone through. And I think that's the same with any successful person. It's people look at him, they're just that one person and it's, they're the one person who's willing to do what other people aren't willing to do. So. Yeah, I mean, the people that say that though, those are the people that aren't successful, they're not willing to do what it takes and chances are they probably never will, you know. And so they're always going to look at the successful people and say, they just got lucky, you know, but really deep down, I think they know that they're just insecure about, you know, their self and what they're willing to do. You know, they know that they're not willing to do what I do every day. You know, if they think it's luck and, you know, they can come and walk a day. Now, I mean, these people couldn't even do one hour of my life, you know, and the things that I have to deal with and the things that I think about and trying to get to the next level and, you know, it's all about adapting, you know. And, you know, people think, and this is a true statement, people think that, you know, the, the Instagram, you know, influencers that started in 2012 have had a huge advantage because there was so much more organic growth in 2012 than it is now. And, you know, now there's so much money getting poured into Instagram from advertisers that it's kind of watering down the entire system. And there's not as much organic growth because, you know, now they're making so much money on ads because they built up such a huge platform. And a lot of people can say, man, I wish I could have started Instagram in 2012. I'd have a million followers right now. I'm one of those people, right? But I'm not sitting here saying that, you know, man, I wish I'm looking for a way to still grow, you know, different platforms, you know, I'm on every platform. And so like, right now, right this second, there's a platform called TikTok. Gary Vee talks about that. And it, and it's, you know, it's Musically that was bought by Facebook and they changed the name to TikTok. Okay, guys, you know, like open up your eyes right here for a second, you know, there's zero paid ads on TikTok right now. The organic growth is through the roof. Everybody on TikTok is like eight years old to high school. Okay, in five to 10 years, they're going to be, you know, 25 to 35 years old. Okay, this is a huge, huge opportunity to, you know, this, this is Instagram in 2012 or 2010. Okay, this is Instagram in 2012. This is your opportunity to get out there and post consistent content every day and get a million followers within a year, two or three, depending on how good your, how well you adapt your content as you go along and figure out what works and what doesn't work. But you can literally take that and continue to grow there, get two million followers, whatever over the next five years. But then, you know, those people are watching you. All right, you turn around and can, you know, these people are going to be, you know, our age, you know, in the next decade. They're going to be massive influencers just on another platform. Right. And so they're going to know you from this. And so these are the things you have to think about when all the people are saying, I wish I would have done this and I wish I would have done that. There's always an opportunity to, to take advantage of. If you have your eyes open, you're looking for the opportunities and then you're willing to put the work behind what it takes to take advantage of those opportunities, you know? So I'm always looking for the next like little edge. Meanwhile, continuing to put out consistent content, putting in consistent work, you know, selling properties every day. I'm making YouTube videos every day. This month, I'm in the middle of my 28 day real estate challenge where I do, it's one video every morning for 28 days. Okay. And I'm also doing a video in the evenings. Okay. I just posted when you watched me. I literally filmed it before you got here, edited it, finished editing it while you were here, posted it on YouTube right before we started this interview. Because I'm committed to doing two videos a day on YouTube, you know, during this 28 day period. That's what it's about. It's just trying things, figuring out what works, but putting the work in, you know what I mean? You know, you say committed, but doing actually read a couple of things on and watch a couple of videos on commitment and what, what holding to your own commitments to yourself will do for your level of belief. Um, just so many people say, oh, I'm going to go do this and then they don't do it. Or if it, oh, I'm going to go work out, but oh, it's raining outside. It's not going to work out today instead of working out in their house. So, you know, just so many people won't keep the commitments to themselves. And when you did, I actually put a video out Monday on Facebook, a commitment challenge, like whatever your commitment is, just make a commitment every day or make a commitment for the week, stick to that commitment and see what that does for your level of belief. You know, just help you realize that you can do these things you're saying, you know, you're going to do. Uh, so, you know, I love that, you know, a challenge like that 28 day challenge. That's, that's awesome because it helps people, you know, commit to it. Now most people aren't going to do that. It challenges me. It challenges them because I'm putting a video out every day, giving them a daily challenge. And then a challenge is me to actually make a video every day, giving them a challenge. But it's funny you say that because day one was viewed 7,500 times. Day two was like 6,500. It was 6,500. Day three was, was like 5,700. Day four was like 4,500. Like it, it continuously, so we've leveled out at about 1100 views, a video where a week and a half in. So it went from 7,500 to 1100 who are still, you know, watching it. And, you know, and then out of the 1100, how many are actually putting forth the effort, you know, it dwindles down, you know, to 1%. You know, so because like you said, it's like commitment is belief. Like if you believe something, then you're going to commit to it. If you don't commit, that means you don't really believe, you know, like I believe in believing 100%, you know, 100. 99.9. Because that .01 is what's going to take you down. That, that, that, that .01 is the fears you have. It's the doubt in yourself. It's, you know, you're not committed. You don't really, you're scared to commit because you think you might actually have to work and you're scared to put yourself in that situation where now you have to put this work in, you have to enjoy all that, you know. So, you know, believing, working hard, adapting and being patient. You know, that's the four key principles. If someone's not successful or as successful as they want to be, I can talk to them for five or 10 minutes about their business, their philosophies, what they got going on. And I can tell you which of these four things they're either they either don't really believe or maybe they really believe that they're not really working hard, consistent, hard work, or they're not adapting. They're not trying new things, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't work and kind of, you know, tweaking their, their, their model as they go. Or maybe they do all these things. Maybe they believe they work hard and they adapt really well, but then they're not patient. You know, they're, they're anxious. They like, why am I not making that million yet? And then, you know, once they get to the million, those kind of people, it's like, why am I not making two million yet? Why am I not making three million, 10 million? It said a lot of lag time and a lot of businesses, a lot of people don't understand that. You know, a lot of the stuff you do now, the relationships you build now will wind up helping you succeed down the road. It's so many, again, that microwaves society, people want it now. And, you know, like what, you know, what you've built, it's not like you built it overnight. It's, you know, consistently building relationships and just pouring value into people. You know, it's just, now it's just coming back to you 10 fold down the road. But you're right. I think the impatient thing is because of the way society is. And like you said, it's getting worse. It's, that's probably one of the biggest ones. Yeah, it is. It's the worst one. But the other, you have to have all four of these. It's a puzzle. And if you don't, you know, there's, there's something missing in one of these, part of one of these, if you're not successful or as successful as you want to be, there's something in one of those four things that you're missing. That you're just, you're overlooking, you don't realize it. For me, it was patience. Because in 2014, I did 600K and I wanted to do a meal the next year. And so, you know, I put together this huge plan to do a meal. I was going to talk to this many people, get this many listings, do this, that. And I had an equation, a little, you know, game plan to get there. And so the next year, I started trying to implement all this stuff. And by March, I realized I'm only going to make 600K again. So it became not deeply, I wasn't depressed. I was more deeply frustrated with the fact that, why can't I do what I wanted to do here? And that year was the year I had to learn that I am doing everything I need to do. I do believe, I do work hard. I am adapting, but I got to be patient. You know, like I knew all, I knew what was going to happen. I just wasn't letting myself, you know, go through the process to get there. I wanted it now. And so when I learned that this, that year in 2015, that was a year that from then on, I haven't had a moment of unhappiness with where I am in my career. Like the goals that I have right now are way bigger than where I am right now. But I'm not using that as a crush to be unhappy with where I am. You know what I mean? Super happy with where I am, but super hungry and motivated to go to the next level. That's the ultimate, I think, is what most people are missing is being happy and satisfied with where they are, but still having this just crazy drive to get to the next level. Because to me, that's just ultimate happiness. When you're happy with where you are, but you love the process so much, and you know where you're going to be. It's just a matter of time. And you don't try to rush the process because you know that it is a process. You have to go through the process. Yeah, I actually wrote a really good book on that. And one of the things we tell everyone is, by the way, the book is Chopwood Carry Water. It's a great book. It's all about process. But in our industry, we tell people all the time, marry the process, divorce the result. Because you're going to have to go through, I'm sure, so many phone calls. You're going to get told no, no, no, no, no. That's the result of that phone call. But you're sticking with the process and then what pops out on the other end as you continue on the process and stop being impatient is really the beauty of it. And that's where you're going to see the success. I tell everybody, this is one of the biggest things with impatience is everybody wants those results. And they're shooting for these results. And if they see halfway through the year, they're not going to hit those results. They become depressed or frustrated. And that year, 2015, when I realized all this, I realized that the results don't matter. You can't control the results. You can only control what you do on a daily basis. I want to take yesterday and I want to understand what happened yesterday, but then I want to forget yesterday. And I want to start over zero today. And I want to go from zero to 100. I want to I want to go to sleep tired and wake up hungry. I want to go to sleep exhausted because I put everything on the table. Every ounce of energy, every ounce of physical energy, mental energy to try to accomplish the bigger goal, which is to be happy and to help as many people as humanly possible, you know, through, you know, not just work, but also marriage and life and friends and family, you know, yeah, you have to have it all, you know, I know you got in 2014, 15, but I want to take you back a little bit to where I think it's one of the most inspirational parts of your story is Megan with 2007, 2008. What happened back then? Well, where were you back then? And then what happened? Well, like I said, I got in real estate when I was 20. And, you know, had that slow start. Once I started selling, I was selling to a month for a while. And then the market completely exploded. Price has doubled in about two years. I think everybody remembers that, that was around during that time. And I literally made a million dollars during that two year period. So I'm 23. And I'm a millionaire, you know, I took commissions, I was flipping properties, you know, I was making so much money commissions, and I was flipping properties, and I was just flipping them into more properties and more properties. So, and then, you know, I'm sitting here on top of the world, I got Cadillacs and Hummers and Houses. And the next thing I know, the rug basically gets, you know, jerked out from under me. And I literally fall all the way down right on my face. And I go bankrupt. I lose everything. I'm sleeping on friends' couches. I slept in my car a couple nights. And I went back to roofing houses. So during that time, when I was, you know, in my mid-20s losing everything and going through that whole ordeal, I was literally just as happy then as I was before I made the mill, why not have the mill as I am now? I'm probably a little happier now. But the reason being is because I was right next to people that were 60 and 70, you know, 50 in their 40s that were going through the same exact thing that I was going through in my mid-20s. And I knew it, that this was a blessing that I was able to learn. I knew that I was going to learn so much from this that it was going to take me to where I am now eventually. So I saw all this happening, you know, and I was literally just enjoying the moment. I was roofing houses again. You know, I got a job in an oil rig. I was, you know, working on an oil rig. So some point during that down moment, something clicked and I was like, I want to know why I failed. I want to really want to get, like, because when it happened, I was just kind of letting the dust settle. So I was just like roofing houses, not really worrying. I was just trying to survive. But then when I got my feet under me and started making money on the oil rig with no bills, you know, I let everything go. The only bills I had was a cell phone bill and I kept my license active, you know, which is pretty minimal cost. I had a car that a friend gave me that was beat up. Like I had no bright lights. You couldn't open the passenger door. I put a boom box in the back seat to listen to music like the radio didn't work and stuff. That was the car I had for a while. And, you know, something clicked once I got my feet under me and I was like, okay, now I'm ready to try to figure this thing out. And I just started reading. I read 100 books over a two-year period. It's about one a week. And somewhere in there, in one of those books, something clicked and I realized the reason why I failed and the biggest reason why. Outside of the fact that I over leveraged myself with buying all the properties and that's really kind of what took me under. But the reason why I couldn't continue to sell properties and the reason that, you know, if I would have been able to continue selling properties, I would have continued to be able to make notes and I would have, I would have worked my way out of those situations without going bankrupt, without losing everything, without sleeping on friends' couches. So the reason that I figured out was that up to that point in my career, it was all about the fast money, the deal, the transaction, the closing, trying to get people to just do deals so I can make money. And what I realized was that you have to, it has to be about the people. So something, one of those books may open my eyes up to this. And I also noticed that I was researching the market and I realized that my clients, that were my clients when I was in business, were still buying and selling properties at the bottom. When I was out of the business working on an oil rig, and that really opened my eyes to, you know, I could have had these deals if I would have maintained those relationships. And what I realized was that when the market crashes, transactions slow down, but people don't go anywhere. And closings continue to happen every single day. If you go back through the history of, you know, real estate, you know, through the darkest times, you know, in 2007, 8, 9, 10, there were still transactions happening every single day. You know, prices go up and down, days on the market fluctuate, inventory fluctuates, all these things fluctuate. But the one thing that's constant is closings continue to happen every single day. And so I started putting all the stuff together in my head and I started to realize what I needed to do and how I needed to do it. So in 2008, I got laid off from the oil rig because a year Obama came in presidency, a lot of things changed in the gas and oil industry. And I ended up getting laid off. And luckily enough, I had started to realize all this about six months before I got laid off. And I was already dabbling in real estate, talking to property owners and trying to, you know, get back in the game. And I had a couple of closings lined up. It was crazy how it all happened. And I remember I got laid off from the oil rig. I had closings like 30 days out from that, two closings. And I remember the week before those closings, I had to borrow $500 from my dad just to make it through that last week to get to those closings. And I think I got like 20,000 or something, you know, for those two closings. And you know, I was like, thank you, Jesus, you know, like I'm back in the game, something I didn't know if I would ever be able to do again. You know, I mean, from 05 to 2008, zero sales, you know, lost everything, you know, sleeping on friends' couches, roofing houses, working on an oil rig. I didn't know that I would ever get back to real estate. It was just kind of a thing that I just figured I would, didn't know how. And it happened, you know, it happened because I was curious of why I failed. I read all those books. I kept studying the market. I kept watching the agents that got out of the business like me. I was watching the ones that continued to sell through the crash. There's a lot of agents that continued selling through the crash. And I was like, what's going on here? And so, you know, just learning, learning what happened through all that, you know, opened my eyes up to what was possible and how you can actually handle market crash, you know. So when the market crashes, you just adapt, you know, the market's changing all the time anyway. A crash is no different. What I realized is that there's no such thing as like a recession or a crash or a depression for real estate agents. There's only three kinds of markets. There's a buyer's market, a seller's market, and a mixed market where it's kind of balanced between buyers and sellers. You know, it's either, you know, the buyers have the advantage because of the way the market is. The sellers have the advantage or it's kind of balanced out. But that's it. There's not a fourth market where there are no closings or, you know, everything goes away. Even 9-11, you know, in 2001, even 9-11 was, you know, closings continue to, you know, there's nothing that's happened out there that's just stopped sales. People are still moving. People are still buying houses. You know, like if your mom dies, you know, like people die regardless of what the market's doing. And now your heirs have to sell the house, okay? If the market, you know, something happens with the market, you lose your job, you got to sell your house. Or it goes into foreclosure. If it goes into foreclosure, what happens then? My client buys it out of foreclosure, you know, or I buy it out of foreclosure. So there's just, things fluctuate, but if you understand that it's about people and if you take the approach of what can I do to help you, not do you want to buy or sell, you know, not will you buy or sell so I can make a commission. I don't really care about that. I just want to know what you do want to do and I want to help you develop a game plan to do that. If it's not to do anything for two years, great. Is there an agent you would work with in that two year when it happens? No, cool. I'd like to stay in touch. You know, if you want to do something in six months, okay, why? You know, why do you want to do it in six months? What's going on? You know, what's the bigger reasons behind why you're buying or selling? You know, it's the same thing in sales in general. It's like, this is what I do. How can I help you? Okay, that's what you want to do. Why? Okay, cool. Well, since that's the reason, here's what we need to do. You know, I mean, that's just sales 101, I think, for the future. You know, I think that's the sales script 101, you know, moving forward in the industry. You know, that's the sales script. The philosophy of sales moving forward is quit charging people $1,000 for coaching or for your course. You know, give it all for free, provide the value because my friend Coach Michael Burke says, would you want a billion dollars or a billion friends? You know, do you want a billion dollars? Or would you want a billion friends instead of that million, that billion dollars? Okay, everybody says a billion friends. Why? Because you can make so many more billions of dollars off of a billion friends. So if the object is to get friends, not dollars, okay, what's the quickest way to get friends to say, hey, I've accomplished this. I want to tell you how to do it for nothing. And now they love you forever. That's how you build an audience, you know, and moving forward. This is the new business model, you know, for influencers and, you know, you know, coaches and trainers and speakers. This is the new business model moving forward. You know, I think that there's, there's a couple of people doing this right now, but I think I'm, I think I'm one of the pioneers in this, give the information for free without charging industry. And, you know, it's a land grab. Because, you know, if I'm charging, then people, people go through your, your content, they get to the part where you charge them and they say, okay, I knew it. I knew it, you know, I knew that he was going to try to charge me something. Thanks for no thanks. I enjoyed it up to this point, but I don't want to have to pay to see anymore. See you later. And you lose that person forever. Whereas if you just give it all for free, they get in there and they, they not only like you, but they love you because you, you gave them the real value. You said it was free and then you gave, you, you, you did what you said you were going to do. And that's when you really grow, you know, that personal brand, you know, as somebody who does what they say they're going to do, you know? I, you know, I always like to believe that things happen for you, not to you. And I think you realize that going through what you went through, you know, you learn a lot of lessons through it. You had a lot, obviously a lot of perseverance and probably the large majority of the people who were in real estate at that time aren't anymore or at least for a long while weren't in real estate because a lot of people would deal with stuff like that and say, you know, woe is me mentality. Oh, look what happened to me. You know, look, look, you know, it sucks that this happened to me, you know? And I think you kind of figured out like this happened for you. Is it like you've, from just, you know, hearing you talk, it sounds like you figured out why it happened for you. It had did not happen. You wouldn't have read a hundred books. You wouldn't have read that book that made something click in your head and say, Hey, you know, I know your motto relationships over transactions, you know, and I need to focus on truly helping this person get what they want and not trying to figure out how to make money from this person. And I think that's what a lot of people, that's really sales in general, you know, it should be sales 101. You know, how can you help this person? How can you sell somebody something? And I think you, you realize that, you know, early on and that a lot of people, it's just, it's, it takes so many people so, so long to realize that. So I'm, I think you've really mastered that and you've, you've definitely through social media, you've put that out there, you know, that's, that's how you do so well. What would you say keep, keeps you producing at such a high level? What, what is it that has Ricky Caruth just, just dominating in this industry and real estate industry, you know, top agent in the state and just producing at such a high level? Well, I mean, it's just the fact that I know I can do it, you know, and if I don't do it, then, you know, I won't be able to sleep at night kind of thing. You know what I'm saying? I just, I'm addicted to the process. Like I, you know, I get a high off of each level that I hit. You know, I've pretty much plateaued out on my real estate business, you know, because I'm spending so much time trying to grow my social media presence in my coaching business. You know, so, so the real estate business is kind of plateaued, but then I'm almost doubling my income with the coaching business. So I would have to fair to say, especially this fast, there's no way in the world I could have doubled my income if I had just stayed, you know, there's no way I could just strictly do real estate and would have been able to double my income. Maybe it's possible, who knows, but you know, I wasn't doing social media with real estate at all, you know, up to the point that I started coaching. I wasn't doing social media whatsoever. And so I actually, I feel like looking back on it, I needed to get into the coaching industry to just so that it would kind of make myself get into the social media world because man, it's global. You know, I mean, you have the whole world in the palm of your hand, you know, that you can communicate, you know, whatever your message is and help people and grow that audience and grow that brand. And I wasn't doing that, you know, so my social media, you know, presence is all focused around helping agents succeed and doing it for free. It's not necessarily real estate, you know, I have real estate, I do a little bit of my real estate business on social media, but I focus more on, you know, the coaching industry and speaking and writing books and doing all the different things that I do, but I know that I can do it. Like I know I can be the number one coach in real estate. I know I can be the top influencer in real estate. I know I can be the top influencer in the world, you know, I know that I can do these things. And if I don't give it everything I have to make it happen, then I'm always, then I'm going to look back and regret, you know, I didn't, you know, I didn't try, you know, I knew I could do this, you know, but I just said the heck with it. I just, to be honest with you, bro, I really don't know what else I would do. You know, like, why do I keep doing stuff? Why do I keep at it? Why do I keep, you know, producing? Why do I keep pushing so hard and stuff? I literally don't know what else I would do. You know, what else, what else would I do? Like just, I don't know. I don't know what I would do. You know what I mean? What do people do that don't, you know, try to push themselves to the next level and I mean, what do people do? Watch TV, sit around in the couch. I watch TV sometimes. Yeah, live a super mediocre. I watch TV sometimes, like at night, you know, when I'm going to bed, turn the TV on and kind of fall asleep to TV. You know what I'm saying? You know, watching TV all day long, you know what I mean? That's got to get boring, you know? So at some point, the people that are watching TV all day long, I mean, at some point, they got to say, you know, this is, this is boring. So what would they, what would those people graduate to? Right. I'm just saying, like, there's nothing else, there's nothing else to do, you know? I mean, and a lot of, a lot of coaches and a lot of agents, they don't understand why I'm doing all this either. You know, they're like, you know, you could have a team, Ricky. You could have a team of agents under you that's doing all your real estate stuff. You wouldn't have to do anything and still make money. You know, they don't understand. They don't, they don't understand why I am editing videos and, and like doing that when I can hire that out easily, you know, and I do, I hire out a lot of it, but I do some of it too. People don't understand why I still show property, you know, or go on listing appointments or make phone calls. They don't, they don't understand. And my, my rebuttal is what else am I going to do? You know what I'm saying? Like I'm trying to get somewhere fast, you know, as fast as I can possibly get there. And if I'm not putting in the work and doing the things that it takes to get there, I'm not going to get there. You know, if I live in a world where, you know, why am I doing what I'm doing? I could, I could not be doing this. It trips me out all the people out there that are trying to work so hard to put themselves in a position where they don't have to work. I'm literally trying to figure out how, when I'm in 10 years, how I can work even more hours. You know, like in my mind, I'm trying to figure out where can I squeeze another hour in to my day. I got to where I was waking up at 430 every day. No, I am waking up at 430 every day because I get so many DMs on Instagram. And it was just, I had no time to answer all the DMs. And I was like, okay, where can I get an extra hour to answer all these messages? Because these messages are real messages of people that need real help with legitimate questions that are dying for somebody to just tell them, you know, the answers of this stuff and help them with their situations. You know, it's like, if I don't answer those, those DMs, it's like, I'm turning my back on the industry. You know what I'm saying? So I feel obligated. So where can I squeeze another hour in? Okay, 430 to 530. I can squeeze an hour in there. So for the past six months or more, I've been getting up at 430 answering DMs for an hour before I go to the gym, you know? And I'll do it again. Like, I'll figure out some way I can squeeze another hour in the day, you know, at some point in the future when I need another hour, you know what I mean? And it's crazy because I still have time to do what I want to do. I do what I want to do every day. Like today, the wind blew for the first time in like two months and I was able to go kite surfing, you know, something that I haven't known for two months. But in the wind, just in the middle of the day, on a Thursday, 10 o'clock, 10 o'clock, I met one body, we went for two hours. Can't look at your phone during that time. Couldn't answer, you know, like, you're out there in the wind and the ocean and the ways. And you know, like any time the wind blows, you know, 90% of the time, there might be 10% when I'm obligated to a meeting or something, but 90% of the time I can cut off spur of the moment and go do that for two hours anytime I want. People would really freak out if they actually knew how much freedom I have, you know, and how much, and if they understood how much freedom I have, I think they would have a deeper understanding of how much I love the work because I'm literally doing it because I want to. I don't have to do this anymore, you know, like I could call it a day. I can quit anytime I want. I'm doing it because I love to do it. You know what I'm saying? You know, I know we've talked before about, you know, your dreams and building your brand and, you know, wanting to build it up the biggest, the fastest. And, you know, you just got, you know, you have a lot of aspirations to do that. And I heard a quote the other day, it kind of hit me really hard. And it is a lot of truth to it, like one of the greatest burdens. And you're about to have a child. So, you know, you'll know this for sure. But one of the greatest burdens that a parent can place on their children is the unrealized dreams of the parent. You know, so many people just don't live up to their ability. You know, people are so much more powerful and can do so much more than they believe they can. They just don't know it. They haven't given themselves that opportunity to believe in themselves or they haven't had someone else, you know, beside them along the way a mentor saying, hey, you could do so much more, you're better than this. So it's just seeing you go to like your full potential. It's really an awesome thing to see. Because 99.99% of people don't do it. They don't realize what they're capable of doing. And you've kind of figured that out for yourself, like what you're truly capable of. There's a quote of her before. The only statistic that really matters is, has it ever been done before? I think taking it a step further in your case, in my case as well, a greater statistic is, have I ever done it before? You know, you knew how to be successful in real estate before. And so you and you've also, you know, you lost it all. But you knew, starting back at it, you knew that what you, you know, not to the full potential now, you know, where you're capable of, but you knew you were capable of selling houses and getting back into it. What is the number one thing that you believe you've protected yourself against any crash? Like, what is the number one thing you've done to build that security, I guess, like insurance, you know, in case of another crash? I mean, just realizing that a crash doesn't affect you. You know, people think crashes affect them, but they don't. Okay, their net worth may go down. You know, if you have a lot of stocks, start market crashes, you know, that your net worth is lower. You know, but if you're, if you're young, you know, you shouldn't really be worried about that. You're investing long term. You know, when you get to the long term part where you're in your 60s or something, you need to sell the stocks and put it in a more secure asset, some bonds, some this and that, some mutual funds, whatever. So you won't get hit with the, with the big crash like a regular stock could, could see. You know, so just realizing like where, like, I think the biggest thing is, is sometimes you have to go through one of these situations to really appreciate it and understand. That's what's so cool about me coaching agents is because I've been there. You know, there's a lot of, like I'm really wary of listening to people who haven't ever lost. You know, if you haven't ever lost, then you don't know what not to do. If you lost, then you know what not to do because you lost really big. And so, you know, going through it taught me what not to do, you know, over leveraging myself, you know, with short term goals with that leverage. You know, what really, what really gets you is, is, you know, if you're investing short term, if you bet big on short term investments and then something happens short term, it's going to crush you. You know what I'm saying? But if you, if you're investing long term, it doesn't matter if anything happens short term, right? And so I'm diversified with this. Like I have long term investments and then I have short term investments. My short term investments are all cash. You know, I flip houses, you know, one or two a month and but I pay cash for those. My long term rentals that I plan on keeping for a long, long time, 10, 20, 30 years, I finance those. So like I have those financed where the rent pays more than the mortgage. It doesn't matter if the market crashes, people still need places to live. So that's going to continue. That's, that's safe. And then if I buy houses that are short term investments, but pay cash, okay, and I'm holding on to this house for cash and the market crashes, well, that's fine because I'm not paying a note. Now I can turn around and rent it if I need to, or I can sell it for a loss if I want to take what cash I can out of it and then live to fight another day. If that happens, I could take a loss on the one or two houses I own because I only own like one or two at a time. I could take a loss on those, but then I know what the new market is. So I can take that loss, but I still have that cash and other cash that I keep. And so I can, I can now buy even cheaper, you know, so I can still see that those profits on my flips. It's like when a market crashes, you may have temporary, you know, problems, you know, you may have temporary business problems, temporary financial problems, you know, but that's the transition period of the market shifting. Okay, kind of caught you off guard for a second, but if you're not over leveraged in the wrong things, if you're not over leveraged in the short term investments, then you're fine. You know, and so I think that's the biggest thing there on the investment side. And then as far as business goes, you just understand that it's about people. And when the market crashes, we're going to reach out to everybody, you know, every single client that we have ever, you know, when the market decides to take a big downturn, that means that things are going to slow down pretty abruptly, temporarily, maybe a couple months, six months. Okay, and at the end of that six months, the market's still going to be down, but that's going to give people time to adjust to the new market and then get ready to figure out how they want to handle it. So when the market abruptly stops, what we do is now, since it stopped, now we have all this time in front of us. Okay, we have all this time. A lot of people freak out, you know, the business stopped and they have all this time, but they don't know what to do, so they get out of the business. And what you have to do is you have to take that time and just go back through all of your contacts and call them and say, hey, did you see that the market crashed? Cool, look, what do you want to do? Because people only want to do one of three things when the market crashes. They either want to buy because it's cheap and they want to buy right now before it goes up. They got to sell, they're in trouble, you know, the market crashed or they're going to hold and ride it out. There's only three options. They're going to buy more, they're going to sell what they got or they're just going to hold on and stay where they're at. That's it. There's only three things. Would you say that most agents would look at making those phone calls, get someone saying, no, I don't want to buy or sell, you know, I'm just going to hold. Would a lot of them look at that as a rejection, just take that personally and just look at it negatively and just start talking themselves out of the game? Yeah, most of them do, but you know, the best piece of sales advice I ever got, definitely one of the best, was from my first broker. I didn't really realize what he was telling me until I went through the crash and I learned it was about relationships and people, but he told me this in my first year when I was going through those eight months of no sales and I was just, I was kind of frustrated, you know, and I was just like, what am I doing wrong? And I was, you know, having a lot of conversations with him and he told me, and I'm telling you, it didn't hit me for a long time after this, but you know, during my first year, he told me that no, when they tell you no, it doesn't mean no. It means not right now. And that was really big to me later when I realized what he was telling me, but it's such good advice because, you know, if you look at it in terms of, and some of my best clients never even bought a piece of property from me. I made such an impression and built such a huge relationship, such a deep relationship with them. They referred me so many people and they've never even bought or sold a piece of property with me. Some of my best clients have never even bought or sold a property with me. And so, I mean, it goes to the like, I'm never going after a deal. That's the thing. I'm never going after a deal. I want to know what I can do for you, not what I can't do for you. Like sometimes when I'm making calls and people don't realize who I am or something, they just think I'm another agent, you know, they'll pick up the phone, I'll tell them who I am, they'll immediately say, I don't want to sell my house. Okay. And I'm like, good. That's not what I'm calling. You know what I'm saying? I'm calling to see what I can do for you. You know, I don't care what, I don't care what you don't want to do. You know, I want to know what you do want to do so I can help you do that. Okay, let's go with, let's go in this direction. And I literally don't care if somebody does a deal. When I'm showing property, I'm not sitting there saying, we need to make an offer on this or, you know, I'm not saying, look at the blinds, look at this extra room, I'm not saying any of that. I'm walking around being quiet, letting the husband and wife walk around and make their own, you know, assessment of what they think about the house. I don't want to interject into their thoughts, you know what I mean? I want them to feel very comfortable. Your job as a salesperson is to make people feel comfortable. Period. That's it. People feel comfortable with you. They're going to do business with you when they get ready to do business. You know, a lot of people are, are all about, you know, trying to pressure people, pressure people, you know, sell, sell, sell. And I'm telling you, that is something that is like the way of the future is low pressure sales. You know, and that's why I'm trying to get on the forefront of this, because I see the direction of the industry and I want to spread this message as far as I can, so that I can help as many people as many salespeople as I can, not have to get out of the business because they were taught these scripts that make people feel uncomfortable. See what I'm saying? The mainstream, the sleazy salesman. Yeah. The mainstream scripts, the mainstream sales scripts make prospects feel very uncomfortable and thus not do business with the agent or the salesperson that was talking to them. And so the agent or salesperson is sitting here doing everything that their coach told them to do, everything their broker or boss told them to do and they don't know why they can't sell anything. And the fact is that, you know, the prospects are running away from them because they're using these scripts that make prospects feel uncomfortable. Whereas if they would just call them up, see how they're doing. I'm enjoying the days and it Gorge is cool. I don't want to take it too much of your time, but I do this or household around the corner, whatever you're selling, whatever you're selling. And I didn't know if there's anything I could do for you today and then let them talk and really listen to them, you know, and go back through all those questions we talked about, you know, this is what I do. How can I help you? Okay, why do you want to do it? This is how this is how I think we should do it as a professional. You know, let me know what you think. Let's do this. You know, if not cool, you know, let's stay in touch. You know, and when you get to a point, a part where you treat everybody like their family, you know, where every person is like an extended part of your family, that's when you start winning. That's really big because I think a lot of people look at a relationship and say, Oh, well, they didn't purchase something from me or, you know, I didn't make a sale with that person. And it's like it's a closed door. And they don't realize, like you said, your biggest clients are the people who haven't even bought a piece of property from you. They're they love you. You've built a great relationship with them. They're happy to refer because they trust you. They're happy to refer their friends, their other business professionals that they're involved with. Because why? Because I built because I continued to build personal brand with them, showing them who I really am. You know, and so they see that consistent content. You know, they see that consistent content. They say that consistent content means he's a hard worker. That's the thing about social media is when you post consistently, it's showing your followers that you are a consistent person and that translates to he's a hard worker. Consistency is something I want to talk about. So do you think in the span of time that you've gotten back into selling real estate again to where you're at now, if you can just think about this, if you weren't consistent, if you're taking a week off, we're taking several days off and just doing it in chunks and just do you think you'd be anywhere near where you are right now? Every day counts. Every single day, you know, there's a book called The Slight Edge and it's a lot like the book that's called The Compound Effect. They're very similar with the ideas and it's the philosophy is, you know, that the little things that you do on a daily basis add up to be so huge over time. And so even just one day, you know, one day, it means a lot in the long term that you don't even realize because all these little things add up, you know, and so I know agents that do this and sells people. I know people that do this. They'll make some sales, you know, real estate is very lucrative. You can sell two properties and make, you know, 20, 30,000 and there's a lot of agents that take that and then they just take off for several months and then they'll come back and these agents are really good agents. You know, they're really good sales people. They actually have the skills and ability to just come back and sell something in a week. A lot of people can't do that, you know, but there's agents who are very good and, you know, they'll leave for three months. They won't do anything for three months and then boom they'll pop up again. Hey, what's going on? Okay, boom. I sold this thing. See you later. Kind of deal. And it's like, man, if that person would actually work like I work and put that, you know, like he would outsell me, you know, that's what's so crazy. There's people that are way tremendously more talented than me, you know, with people, with communication, with making people feel comfortable. You know, I've developed this skill. There's people that are naturals of this and their natural ability is so high, but their work ethic is so low. And so, you know, that's where I win, you know, is that I can get to the same skill level. I may not have been born with it, but I can get there. And then when I get there, I'm also still outworking you, you know what I mean? So you can't have millionaire dreams with a minimum wage work ethic. And going back to what we were saying before, you know, a lot of people just come out of this doing the bare minimum, the employer employee arena coming into where you got to be an entrepreneur, just doing that bare minimum. And they make the money they want to make. They're happy with that. You mentioned the slide edge, something Jeff Olson says in that book that really hit me. That was, you know, I know you said like that was kind of like a flip the switch book for you. It was for me as well. That was like one of the first books I read when I got into the industry that I'm in. And he talked about how everything you do every minute, every second of the day, you're not just staying the same. You're either getting closer to your goals or getting further away. And also, like it kind of scares me. It really puts a little fear in me because I don't want to slide backwards. I don't want to get further away from my goals. So I'm in a lot of ways, I'm, you know, I'm a lot like you in that sense where like every minute I have to be improving on some area in my life that's important to me, if it's being a father, you know, becoming a better husband, you know, growing my business, you know, bigger, it's I got to be doing something I can't I can't just sit down and watch TV all day. I can't, you know, but you do have to have the recharge times. You do have to have the time where you like kites over you, you know, cut out and, you know, say, hey, you know, got to recharge and come back and just hit it hard again. So it's I love what you said about how some people are naturals, you know, they had a natural skill, they go out and sell. But what you've done is you've developed that skill. You've, you have the importance of yourself. You've continued to develop a skill and become better. But it's kind of like the tortoise and the hare thing. You know, some, some of these people, they get distracted along the way. They're not consistent. You have, you have stayed consistent and you've built that skill along the way. And that's why you're winning. And that's why you are the top agent. You know, that's, that's why you're where you're at. And that's, there's so many parts to your story that a lot of people just, you know, they take for granted and they don't see that. It's just, you know, you, you have consistency is so big in, in everything in life. Consistency is big. I want to switch gears here and go back to, I know that it's for you, I believe, but I was watching Ed Mollett interview and he said most people, the majority of people have, have a check that can be written to pay them for their dreams, to give up on their dreams. And the check will be in the form of, hey, look, you, you never have to get told no again. Here, just take this and yeah, don't worry about it. You know, people give up on their dreams because, because it's getting told no so many times or, hey, you never had to go through a crash. You never have to go through failure again. You know, you, you know, you never had to get somebody curse you out on a FISBO call. You never have to worry about that again. Is there, is there, is there a check that someone can write you and say, here, Ricky, you know, you don't have to, you don't have to, you know, go through any hard work again. You don't have to work super hard. There's no, there's nothing. I mean, I do what I want to do every day, you know, like on my birthday, I do the same thing that we're doing right now. You know, selling properties, trying to help people, you know, making videos, producing content, answering DMs, you know, traveling, speaking, writing books, trying to come up with my next idea that's going to help people, you know, no, there's, there's nothing, dude, if there's something I don't want to do, I just don't do it. You know what I mean? There's nothing, everything I do is what I want to do. You know, there's nothing that I get up in the morning and say, oh man, I wish I didn't have to, you know, do this or do that. It's like every single part of it is fun. You know what I'm saying? So there, there's nothing I could think of that I'm like, man, write me a check that says that I don't have to do this or that anymore. You know what I'm saying? It's literally like, I'm in like the state of mind. I'm in, I'm in the mind state of like, I'm retired. You know what I'm saying? And I'm just doing what I want to do, you know, but I'm still, you know, in my mid 30s. So the level that I'm able to, to relax at and do the fun things is a very high level, you know what I'm saying? So that's kind of where I'm at, you know. I think a lot of people would, they would try to start doing what you're doing, but they don't, you know where you're going. You see how big this can get. You see how big your brain can get. You, you, you're already in the, you know, in the midst of it now. So you see this playing out because you've already had that, yeah, the perspective of the last several years and how this has grown over the year, how your social media has grown over the last couple of years. And a lot of people would, you know, try to start doing what you're doing without their long-term vision. Yeah. And because they don't have the long-term vision, that check can be written for them. You know, but you see that and that's what, it's so important to have that, that vision. Yeah. I mean, the, what, like what I see happening, you know, the, whatever I have to do now for what, what is happening, the reality, what's happening, you know, over the next even one year, two years, five years, 10 years, you know, it's going to be nuts. And so the stuff that I'm doing now is actually fun to me and to know that the things that I'm doing that are fun now is actually what's going to produce the things that I see happening over the next decade is insane to me, you know. It's probably what makes it fun is knowing that all these little things. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. You know, if I was doing this for minimum wage or something, sure. You know, this, you know, you know, but the fact that, you know, I'm doing like, and it's not because, you know, minimum wage, if you want to do it for minimum wage, you wouldn't, you know, why are you saying you love it? If you want to do it for minimum wage, the thing is, is I don't feel like I am making any money. You know, I'm literally doing this for fun, you know, like I, like I'm, I'm making money for fun. I'm producing content for fun. I'm selling properties for fun. You know what I mean? And it's just a different way to look at it, but it's a very fulfilling way to look at it, you know, and it gives you a sense of gratitude, you know, happiness and, you know, empathy for people who don't, you know, don't view it that way, you know, and that's one thing I like to try to share with people, you know, like a lot of what I do is trying to get people to think like I think, you know. Yeah, that's big. And I love how you've made the process fun because you see that and result and you don't just see it like you believe that it will happen. It's going to happen. You got to believe, you got to believe 100% or it won't happen. Yeah. And then that check can be written. I don't like to give myself an option, you know, like I don't, I don't want to plan B, you know, a plan B just sets yourself up to fail plan plan A, you know, it's a plan B sets plan A up to fail. You know, I want to I want to say this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to make this happen, you know, there's not another option. This is what I'm going to do. So, you know, I've always kind of had that mentality, but I always have a lot of irons in the fire too. Like, you know, when I didn't sell something the first 30 days, I immediately went back on the roof, you know, when the market crashed, you know, that next day, you know, after I decided that I that this wasn't that I was going under, I was on the roof the next day, there was no like dead time, you know, how a lot of people they lose a job and then they just don't have a job for like a couple months because they're looking for another job. That doesn't happen to me. Like the very next day, I'm doing something. I remember one time I was roofing with my dad and me and him got a fistfight over a tape measure, you know, I put in the wrong buck at the day before, you know, when I were cleaning up, I put in the wrong buck in the back of his truck and he couldn't find it, you know, and then he, he found it, you know what I'm saying, but he was so mad the whole time looking for it. And then he found it and we got an argument over it and we literally got like an a fistfight over it. And I literally walked home. It was like, because we left the house, we're at the gas station on the corner, which is a couple miles away, you know, and that's where the fight happened. I walked home from there. Well, I walked home and looked in the yellow pages and I went to the Rs and looked for roofers and I like called like three of them and like found somebody that wanted a roofer that day and, and went, you know, and worked that day, you know, like a lot of people would have went home and said, I've got to fight with my dad and just like took the rest of the day off and I don't, again, I don't know what people do like when they're not, you know, working or whatever, but I literally went and I remember like working that day and I worked for like two days with that guy and me and my dad made up and I went back to work with him, but there's never any downtime. It's the same thing with real estate, you know, like it's phone calls, phone calls, phone calls, okay, now we're busy because all the phone calls we made, oh, now we're not busy because we haven't been making calls, but we did all this business. But now, okay, when we fill that up, there's never any debts. I like the level of effort and energy stays here the whole time. The market does this, but the level of energy does this, you know, we have a seasonal, you know, like real estate is seasonal and the wintertime slows down a little bit. A lot of agents take off during that time. They're just, you know, again, I don't know what they're doing. Not making the calls anytime they're not stuffing the pipeline. I don't know what they're doing, but see, when the market drops off, that means I have time to make calls, you know, any moment of downtime, I'm going to fill it up with something that's super productive. And that's how I close the gap on people because most people lay down during different seasons or the market crashes, like whatever it is, why people slack or give themselves a break. That's when I go harder, you know, to put more effort in to try to build more brand, you know, to get to get ahead. The smart, you know, we in our industry that health and wellness industry, it's seasonal. And you can imagine, you know, coming up in January, it's like, you know, it goes nuts and everybody has those New Year's resolutions, but it's, a lot of people want to start really working when it picks up. They're too late. They're too late. They didn't lay the groundwork, you know, they didn't plant those seeds in the downtime, in the slow time. And that's why that's when we really hit it hard. Then we hit it so hard in that downtime, come the busy seasons. We're so busy. It's almost overwhelming. And that's how, you know, we just pass everybody up and just crush it. One of my chapters in my first book was champions were made in the off season. And it's a philosophy that, you know, when it slows down the winter, that's when you really go hard. And that's how you, and I started doing this, I forget what year it was, but I realized the seasons and I realized kind of, okay, that gives me time to make calls. And so I started trying to make it a point to really go harder in the winter. And what happened was is I wouldn't sell as much as I did in the busy season, but see years before I started doing this, I wouldn't really sell anything through the winter, you know, because I was one of these that slacked off. I didn't understand how it all worked. But then when I realized it, I adjusted, I adapted and I started working harder in the winter because it was like, okay, that's the time that I actually build my brand with more people that never didn't know me before. That way the next year's busy season, I have a bigger base of people going into the busy season. And then the next winter comes and I build my base more and then the busy season happens and I grow more. And then the next, you know, and I just stair step it every year. And I literally use the strategy to produce more that I literally think that this is the reason why I grew so much over like a five year period of time to get to, you know, to grow so fast. Because I went from making like 150 to like three years later doing like a million, you know. And so like it was literally this strategy is what got me there. And you know, I call it, you know, champs are made in the off season because they literally are. That's when all the football players are working out the hardest is in that off season to get ready for the next season. It's the same philosophy. They're too late if they start with season starts. And what I found was is that through that, I went from not closing any deals at all really in the winter to I wouldn't close as many, but I would still have consistent closings. You know, it wasn't, you know, three or four a month is more like one or two, or maybe one month with none. But like I had enough sales to make myself feel good that at least I was still kind of having some kind of consistent sales, you know. So that was a good feeling, you know. So I was able to keep my sales going through the winter as well as build a bigger database during the winter for the next busy season each year and just continue to grow, grow, grow each year. I really appreciate the time that you've been able to take out of your day. I mean, I know you've already taken some time out today, couple hours kite surfing. So, but I'm glad that we've been able to finally connect and do this. And I would love, you know, in the future, you talk more about more about how to see you created more on your work ethic and just little things, little nuggets that can help other people that would apply to anyone, not just in your industry or my industry, but really apply to anyone just in life in general or in business and talk more about how to help entrepreneurs like yourself and myself. So thanks so much for being really appreciated. Absolutely, bro. Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to the next time.