 They go under contract or list their property, they're off the list. If they ghost you, off the list. If they tell you they've decided to hold off or not, off the list. So as people come off the list, you have to have some kind of mechanism in place to add more people to the list. And so in 2008, I was laid off from the oil rig, got back into real estate, and just started slaying it, basically, because I completely switched. I did a 180 with my strategy, and I was more focused on why people are buying or selling. Like when I run into prospects, I'm wondering why they're doing what, why they're wanting to do what they're trying to do. And that right there, guys, if you can get that right there and understand that that's really the goal is to learn why people are trying to do what they're trying to do. Because here's the thing. They already know when they want to buy or sell. It's not up to us to try to talk them into buying or selling, or force them into buying or selling, or anything of that nature. We're there, okay, get this. We're there just to help them do what they're already doing. If you change your business around from, how can I get somebody to buy or sell something to? How can I just help them do what they're already going to do, which is buy and sell property? Then you're going to be much more successful. Things are happening every single day by the truckloads, okay, and have every day of your life and will every day for the rest of your life, no matter what the market does. So when you realize that business is just like this ongoing like belt that's just always going. It's never going to stop, no matter what. You know, the pandemic couldn't stop it, 9-11 couldn't stop it, 2008 couldn't stop it. The dot-com crash couldn't stop it, in the late 70s and 80s, all the crashes, you know, real estate did not stop. And here's the cool thing about it, each of our individual businesses is such a microscopic dot compared to the overall local market, not even the entire industry. Let's just look at the local market. Your individual business is like .0001% of the overall market. If the overall local market retracts, say 50%, you're still only this .001%, it doesn't affect you at all. Your business is so small compared to the overall industry and just your local market that it doesn't matter if the market contracts 90%. It could contract 90% and that 10% that's left is still plenty for you to close as many deals as you can handle. You got to wrap your head around this and realize that the only thing holding you back is you. It's not the market. It's not that there's a lack of leads or there's a lack of, you know, deals happening or competition. That's just, those are lies you're telling yourself that you slowly believe and then, you know, you start to base your actions around those beliefs on those lies that you're telling yourself and you don't even realize your full potential. You don't even realize that there's way more out there for you because you're holding yourself back and you're living in this bubble that, you know, that this is where you're supposed to be closing one or two deals a month or whatever. It's just false. If you think that, you know, that other agents in the market, there's only enough business to go around. You're in a false reality if you think it's not unlimited forever, you're in a false reality if the market dictates your success whatsoever. It's a false reality that you're living in big time and you got to, you got to shake it and realize that, okay, he's right. I got to go get it. Then what do we do? You got to filter it down to the top, maybe three activities that really, really work well and spend a hundred percent of your time on those three activities and really commit. Too many of us are trying to do like eight to 10 different things and here's the punch line. All eight to 10 things work. Okay, but the thing is, is we can't do eight to 10 things really, really well, right? You have to be willing to sacrifice losing business on those seven things because you know, these three things work the best and you want to go all in there so that you can maximize, right? And so I refer to it as a cup. Everybody has a different size cup. Your cup represents how much you can handle. Everybody can handle a different amount of business. That's just in our DNA. We can only handle so much at once. We can only handle so many listings, so many pending, so many, you know, ongoing prospects that might do something and follow up and then prospecting for new clients. We can only handle so much stuff, okay? And some people can handle more than others and so they have different size cups and so what you have to do is you have to figure out how much you can handle. Agents, you know, they think they know what their clients are going to do. A client will tell you, I'm not coming below 600. I don't care what happens. I'm not coming below 600 and I'm thinking, cool. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, yeah, you are. Yes, you are. So you don't go back to the other agent and say, oh, my client won't come down below 600. Don't do that. Right? Now, you can use that as a negotiation tool if you want, but don't say it in your mind like you actually believe it because 80%, 90% of the time people stretch way more than they told you they would. And so many agents just think they know what their clients are going to do. You know, don't ever, ever take a client. You know, it's like, you know, okay, a client's going to not take less than 600 and you got a buyer that wants to write 550 and an agent calls you and says, I got a buyer that wants to write 550 cash. You think that'll work. Should we even waste our time writing it up? You say, yep, go ahead and write it up. We'll see what happens. Don't say, well, you only said he would take 600 because here's the thing, that buyer will stretch and that seller will stretch way more than both of the agents think. There's no need in the agents even talking about it. That agent should never even call you to ask you that. Everything needs to be done in writing, guys. Don't ever call an agent and say, what do you think your seller might take? Or do you think this will work or that will work? He doesn't know. It's not up to him. It's the seller's decision of what they're going to do with the property. There's no need in the agents talking about that. There's no need in the agents talking about repair denims, right, you know, verbally, inspection, call the agent, the seller's agent. This is what the buyer would like fixed. No. Why are we even talking about this? You make a list. You have the buyer sign it and you send it to the listening agent and say, here's the list of repairs. Here's what they want done. Here's the inspection report. Let me know what the seller thinks. That way you think, Mr. Agent, I could care less what you think or what you think the client will do or what you think you know the client's going to do. You don't know anything, right? So don't assume what your clients are going to do. Always put stuff in writing and play it all the way up to the end. You never know. If they do that through you or another agent, let's say they chose a different agent to go with, either way, they go under contract or list their property. They're off the list. If they ghost you, off the list. If they tell you they've decided to hold off for now, off the list. So as people come off the list, you have to have some kind of mechanism in place to add more people to the list. To where you maintain. You maintain the number of 15 to 20, right? That's the secret is to keep it there. If you're going to go below 15, then you're not going to close one a week. Your numbers will start to kind of go down. But if you can maintain the 15 to 20 and really work that list right, you're going to close one a week. You want two a week? 25 plus. Two a week. That's what I always had. I've closed two a week since 2014 every week. Single agent, one assistant. Two, two, two, two, two every week for eight years.