 What up what up guys so welcome back to another episode of the pros and cons of being a real estate agent today I want to give you a big con and it was the biggest con of my career it ended up being a huge pro After it's all said and done, but I want to talk to you about kind of just give you a little piece of What I went through when the market crashed and I lost everything that I had So I got in real estate 2002 a lot of you know my story. I was 20 years old by the time I'm 23 I was a millionaire. That's only because the market completely blew up and prices doubled on a couple years It wasn't because I did anything special or had any magic key or was doing anything crazy It was just because literally the market just surged so high so quickly and I just got in the the beginning stages that wave and just wrote it up and Felt very blessed felt very lucky You know, I was working really hard and I was being honest and I was trying to really make it happen But being 23 and becoming a millionaire you make a lot of bad decisions, especially if you've never had money Your family's never had money. So I didn't really know what to do So the golden rule for me growing up and my my my parents always told me, you know real estate is the golden rule I mean, that's what you do when you have money you buy real estate So I started buying real estate I was I was borrowing a lot of money to buy this real estate and I was flipping properties. I wasn't buying and holding I was buying the real estate to flip and that was the problem I was I had no long-term plan in mind for my investing. It was all short-term investing It was short-term investing and I was borrowing a lot of money to do it So I was over leveraging myself short-term bad idea Terribly bad idea. So That's literally there's two things that took me down with the market crashed It was the debt that I had in place with the properties I was trying to flip and as the market turned and went down I got caught with properties that I couldn't turn around and sell even for what I had the money I owed on them much less get back the money I put down or make any kind of profit. So That was a world tough, you know situation there had a lesson properties go So, you know, I lost those but then on the tail end After I lost everything the tail end was is that I couldn't sell properties as a real estate agent to make commissions to make a living okay, so When the the what I realized there was what I always say and I look back and realize that it was all about the deal Up to that point. I had to find out what the true meaning of all this was and it was that I realized that it's Relationships over the transactions, you know and everything to me was transactional I was just trying to get people to do deals and close deals and sign listings and me make money and When I started to focus on the people and the relationships my entire life changed everything started to go up from there, so It took me having to lose everything Read a hundred books studying the market to realize this and then it took me years and years and years of Implementing this to get back on track of where I really wanted to be So everything was a slow process for sure Nothing happened overnight even when I realized everything and I thought that I really had it I still had so much work. I had to put in to get there and I feel like I'm just beginning really I feel like I have so much further to go so much more to learn So I'm always learning. I'm always adapting. I'm always Testing things out trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work and the market in the world is always changing So we've got to adapt with it, but I wanted to make this video about The pros and cons of being a real estate agent and that is this in the beginning of your career If you find a lot of success really quickly, that could be a good and bad thing The bad thing is is that you could get over confident and think that you know you know it all and you could get caught All right, you could get caught a bad way You know the the experience and longevity of the business Comes from experience With all the different kinds of markets that you're going to get hit with over a couple decades of being a real estate agent You know, um We have had one huge crash in my career. I Had a small mini recession in 2010 when the BP will spill hit us And that's why I realized what I learned in the big crash really works and I can make it through any market That's when I moved to remax and said sky's the limit. I'm fixing to just be number one and crush everything but At the end of the day I want you guys to stay grounded and stay humble and and you know, if you find a lot of success quick Don't get in over your head Continue pushing continue trying to learn continue getting those real life experiences under your belt and You know, just continue getting better. You know, I want you guys to get 1% better every day That's 365% better than a year and I love that. That's really the story of my life I'm always just trying to get 1% better every single day. So You can lose it all tomorrow and I know that I know that everything I have now I could literally lose it all tomorrow and I'm okay with that Because that's not what makes me happy. What I have does not make me happy. What I know makes me happy What I've experienced You know where I am with with my skill level of learning how to adapt learning how to communicate with people So on and so forth. That's what makes me happy that I know that I could start from scratch right now and build it all back tomorrow, okay, so Just I just want you to get out of this video that You know, always stay humble always stay grounded always stay grinding always stay learning Don't ever think that you're too good To do certain things. I still show every property. I still go to every listing appointment every inspection every closing I still do all those things because I know that I'm not too good to do those things, right? So Just keep the grind going keep hustling keep pushing and keep fighting. I got your back Let me know what I could do for you. We'll talk to you soon