 In this episode, I sit down with Ryan Pineda and talk about two really important key issues for real estate agents. Number one is real estate investing and how so many agents do not own investment property. And this is, this is wild to me because we're, we help people buy and sell real estate, but we don't really own real estate. I've done a lot of different polls on a lot of different platforms. And for what I can tell, more than half of the real estate agents out there do not own investment properties. Comment below right now if you own investment property, or if you don't own an investment property and what your plan is to own investment property because this is your path to freedom. Okay. A lot of agents will tell me, Ricky, I love sales. I'm never going to stop selling. I'm going to sell to the day that I die. And I was like that. I literally thought that I would do this forever until the day came that I didn't hate sales, but I, let's just put it this way. I was cringing every time a client was calling me. I was like, man, I don't want to do this and you will get to that point. And my point with this is that you've got to start building your rental portfolio long before you get to that point so that you have an out to where when you go out and sell real estate as an agent, it's because you want to, not because you have to, and eventually you can just step out of sales altogether because you're making so much passive income on your investment properties. And when I say passive, you're still managing the property. You're still maybe managing the manager of the property. You're still fixing repairs, paying for those repairs, whatever the case may be. There's still work involved. It's not completely mailbox money. Don't get me wrong here, but you enjoy the appreciation of these properties. You enjoy a lot of passiveness, let's just say, to the process as opposed to going out there and having to sell a property and then having to go out there and put the work in to sell another property to get paid again and again and again. And it's just this hamster will that you're on that never stops. When I made a million bucks the first time in a year, I was like, yes, but then January 1st clicked over and my income went back to zero for the year and had to do it all over again. And it's very daunting. And man, is it a lot of work. And you get to the point where you're like, oh, I'm kind of getting burned out on this. And you're going to wish you have started to put a portfolio together long before that moment. So that's a message I'm really trying to push into the industry right now for agents. And if you've been following along, you know that I'm putting out a lot more content around investing and real estate agents getting into investing. I brought on a thatch when has a million followers on, on Instagram. He has a hundred million dollars worth of real estate. He started as a real estate agent. Now he's 90% real estate investor incredible guy brought on Ryan Seco that one of the one of the head guys at Cardone Capital works directly with Grant Cardone. We talked about everything real estate investing. I'm bringing on Grant Cardone. Okay. I've got a lot of investing type of gas coming on to the show. And because I really want you to get into real estate investing, not because I necessarily want you to invest with me because I have a plan to own hundreds of millions of worth of real estate just on my own. Okay. I have a plan right now to buy a property a month for the next five years and pay that off in the next 20 and have hundreds of millions worth of real estate just here locally in my market without any partners. Okay. This is generational what you can do with this. So that's one thing we talk about. The next thing we talk about is this epidemic of failure in the real estate industry and new agents where they're going wrong. And should you join a team? Should you not join a team and all kinds of different things like this? So this, I believe you're going to find a very, very interesting conversation. I hope you get a lot out of it. Go ahead and smash the like button, click, subscribe, all that good stuff. Shoot a comment when you hear something that resonates with you. And let's get right into it. Most agents are confused around, I've got to get the highest price for my client. And that's not your obligation. It's not always the case. A lot of agents right now struggle because they only wear the agent cap and they never figure out what the investing side looks like. You have to get deep on why people want to buy or sell like the real depths of it, not the surface level, but the depths of what's happening behind the scenes in their life that's causing them to want to buy or sell. Me being an investor has helped me sell so much real estate. And it also helps me raise money and find great partners because they know I'm putting skin in the game as well. I'm buying these properties with them. But the problem is the brokerage number one does not want them to do that. They don't teach it. They don't know it. None of the realtor coaching programs would ever teach that method. So that's why it doesn't happen. If you want to really become a great investor, you've got to have what's up wealth builders today. I've got one of my favorite people in the world. He's spoken at wealth con three times now because this man represents all of the real estate agents that I neglect. This man is probably the biggest realtor on YouTube. He has a portfolio of almost $50 million worth of real estate. He's done over a thousand transactions as a realtor, done over 150 flips. So he's a man that actually invests. And that's my whole thing. I want realtors to do to start taking that money and investing. I got none of them. Ricky Carruth. What's up? What up, bro? And I didn't even mention, you know, you're an amazing content creator too. How many, how many views do you guys have? Like, have you counted your total views yet? I don't really know total views across all platforms. I would imagine it's somewhere like 500 million. Yeah, something like that. You've done a lot of views. Somewhere north of there, I guess. I've been doing it for six years. Just hard core like 12 or 1300 videos on YouTube alone. Dang. You know, I was actually thinking that I was like, actually, I have over a thousand as well. I don't know if they're counting shorts though. I don't know if they are or not. I never really like, yeah, see if they're, I think they might honestly. Are you posting a lot of shorts? A few a week. Yeah, I mean, I've tested everything. I've done like three a day to three a week. And to me, it seems like more shorts on the platform isn't better. I don't think so either. I've done the same thing, but yeah, I see people that get tons of views on shorts too. And I'm like, man, it has to help them, you know, bring people to their long form. Yeah, 100%. So I think we'll talk about social media later on, but a lot of people probably watching this right now are like, okay, I'm a real estate investor. I'm an agent. You know, what's best? Because I think a lot of agents right now struggle because they only wear the agent cap and they never figure out what the investing side looks like. Yeah, that is really tough one because I mean, like we were talking about, you know, 90% of agents don't make it at all. They never even do a transaction as an agent. That's crazy. You know, and I think that they're trying to just get that first deal under their belt. So they can get some momentum. And I think what their mentality is, is let me get this first deal, let me get some momentum as an agent, then I'll take that money and invest it into real estate. And a lot of them don't get there. Right. And that was kind of their plan. And then, and then a lot of them when they do get there and they become successful as an agent, then they're like, well, I'm going to continue to focus here because let me get this to 200, 300, 400, 500, 1000. Let me go all in with this. And they don't even realize that like we were just talking about today, it doesn't take any more time. They're right. They actually see the properties before they hit the market. If they could look at it from an investor lens for a second before they listed it and evaluated if this is a deal that could potentially be something I would like to invest in, they don't do that. Most of them, right? I did a Twitter poll. I did a YouTube poll really close to 70%. And we had hundreds of people, you know, do the poll close to 70% of agents don't own investment property at all. Right. According to these polls. And every time I go speak at a big event, it's like, how many of you own rental properties? It's like just a couple of hands go up, you know what I mean? But you get a wealth con. Yeah. Everyone's like, I invest. Everybody. Yeah. Everybody. Even the real estate agents there. Yeah. They're different type of agent. They think differently. Yeah. I mean, and so I've been a real estate agent slash investor since day one. Yeah. And when I started out, when I was an agent about a year in, I took my money and started flipping houses. Yeah. And so it's, for me, it's like, where's the opportunity at? Yeah. You know? Yeah. Real estate's an industry as a whole. You've got agents. You've got wholesalers, flippers, commercial guys, you know, like there's all these different like niches within real estate, but it's like every single one of them leads to investing for big money. You know, there's none that are just like, hey, I just stay flip or I just stay like an agent or I just stay as a wholesaler. Like there's the active income side of real estate where it's like, yo, okay, I'm going to be an agent and I'm going to try and make a couple hundred thousand or a million dollars as an agent. You've made millions as an agent, right? But it just doesn't stop there, right? It's like, you got to also invest. You got to buy rentals. You got to buy commercial. You got to buy, that's the long-term wealth. If you want to build massive wealth. Yeah. Right. I was telling the story earlier today about these agents that literally died. I mean, dude, I watched them literally with their away and pass away with basically a phone in their hand as they're dying, tall and expired. It's so crazy. They like legends in the industry. People I looked up to just massive respect for, did so much, was probably, these guys were probably agents for like 50 years or something, did so much. And you look at guys like that and you think, man, they have it all. They're at top of the world. Everybody knows them and all this stuff. And it hit me like a ton of bricks when we realized that one specifically was going to pass away and that he was basically on his way out. And the very next day I remember, like I passed by his office going to my office and there he was making calls. And like we got the news the day before, like we heard about in the office that he was sick or whatever. And walking past that office and seeing him in there, calling expires him for sale by owners and stuff was so, it was such an- How old were you when you saw that? I was probably 30, 39. I mean, 29. No, I was like probably like 29, 30, 31, something like that. Okay, so a decade ago. Yeah. Yeah, it was about 10 years ago when this happened. And it changed everything for me because I was like, that's not what I, like I looked up to this person for so long and would walk into his office to get amazing experience from him and advice. And he knew a lot about being an agent. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. But guess what? He didn't own real estate. Yeah. All he owned was his house that he lived in. He didn't own rental properties, right? So let me ask this. So the reason, you know, I've had you speak at WealthCon so much and we've partnered up on, you know, wealthy and investor and wealthy creator. And, you know, you've brought a lot of people from your community into ours is because to me, you represent what an agent should be. Okay? You're doing an amazing job as an actual agent, right? You're not one of these guys who just teaches and they never have done. Number one, you crush it as a realtor. I mean, you're a million dollar a year realtor as it's, as you should be with your craft being an expert on social media. Once again, I got into social media because when I looked at all the real estate investing experts, they weren't really experts. And I was like, what the heck is once again, add this thing that I just couldn't understand. So number one, you're a great realtor. Number two, you also understand investing. You're like, yo, I'm going to make all this money as a realtor. I need to start putting it to make more money. Let me buy some flips. Let me buy some rentals. Let me do these things. Right? So you took your money and you invest it. Number three, you created content around it. You know, I tell realtors all the time, like, guys, make content like you will get listings. You will get buyers. You will, it's going to, you could make multiple six figures right now if you just got good at making content. That's it. Like you want to go buy Zillow leads? No, go buy a camera and pay an editor. You know, like that's a far better investment than buying a Zillow lead. Yeah. So you've crushed it as, you know, a content creator and that in turn has made you, you know, seven figures a year and, you know, all the things that come from content, right? So like to me, you're the modern agent and a, an example to every agent of what you should do as an agent. That's what I try to be is the example. Right? I'm not going to go tell you to do something that I'm not willing to do or that I'm not doing or that I haven't done. Everything I talk about online is, is through experience. You know, it's things that I've actually done. So entrepreneurs, if you want to grow your business, there is no better investment than your own personal brand. The smartest thing I ever did was start creating content and investing into my brand. Ever since then we've been able to triple our business. I've been able to raise more money than ever to continue buying more real estate. And it's all because I create content just like this. Now, a lot of people have asked me, Ryan, how am I supposed to do it? I don't know where to start. I don't know who's going to edit it. I don't know even what kind of set up or camera, anything to do. Well, here's the thing. We can help you with all of that at Panada media. We have a podcast checklist that you can actually get for free at panadamedia.com that's going to go over everything you need on starting a podcast, but to make matters even better, we'll actually edit your podcast for you. We'll repurpose it into short form clips like you see on my Instagram and my Tik Tok so that people will start seeing those clips and watching your podcast and in turn being customers or investors in your business. So if you want the one stop solution where you can get everything done for you, plus get the education you need to grow your personal brand, then you need to go to panadamedia.com and book a free call with our team. You can also go get that free podcast checklist in that training program. Absolutely free by just going there. So go check it out. We're going to make this whole thing about realtors and get them to believe that they need to start investing and doing the things you're doing. They don't need to be like me where they just quit. I quit. I was a quitter with being a realtor. I just hated it. And so thankfully I found my way. But I want to speak to the realtors on this podcast who are still realtors and want to remain realtors. On one hand, you have people who are successful, like you said, your mentor who still just never invest. And it's like, dude, what the heck? How did that happen? Then you have the other 90% who literally do no deals or anything. So let's talk about the people doing no deals. Why does this happen? Well, we're going to say it's tough, number one, like everything else, right? And it's even may even be tougher than a lot of industries, honestly. So they get in and it's really easy to get your license. It's one class and a state test and you get your license. So it's really low bear of entry. I think that's part of it. And honestly, I'm okay. I'm not one of these guys that says, oh, we need to raise the bear of entry for agents. We need to make it a college, whatever, or add more classes or do more things to try to prevent people from coming in. Because I went and been a realtor. Right? And I want to give, I think everybody should have a shot at it. If you think you can come in here and do this. You don't need a college education. Right. Well, you don't need a college education. But like there's people that said, oh, you need to have, you know, there needs to be, you need to be a graduate. You need to, there's all kinds of things people thrown out there because they're like, oh, there's all these really low level agents making the whole industry look bad and stuff. And I'm like, that's going to happen no matter what, how you slice it up. You know, for me, it's like, this gives someone an opportunity to go out there and do something great with their life with not a whole lot of upfront, you know, bearer of entry. So let them in, let them come in here. Let's see what they got because the industry will weed you out. So they come in excited. They think they go on this high and they think, oh, this is going to be amazing. I'm a home boss. I make my own money. You know, we're going to, we're going to, this is going to be awesome. They come in after a couple of weeks and realize they've become a little frustrated because I realize, wow, this is a mountain of knowledge. I'm not going to learn in a day. Then they become disappointed. Every single agent, like sir hand, like every one of them went through the on a high frustrated, disappointed, every single one of them. And then the future top producers, a lot of people quit right then. But the future top producers, they say, okay, you know, like this is harder than I thought. These other people are doing it. So I know I can do it. And let me get out here and make it happen. So they go on another high. And the top producers, they finally figure out how to stomach that emotional roller coaster that you go on. Yeah, but a lot of people can't. It's just too much. You got bills coming in. You don't have anything under contract. You're trying to, I wonder too, like for most of these realtors, if it's the first time they've ever had a commission only job. Well, that's part of the problem too. Yeah, we're brought up and we have a W two job as a teenager, we're working a concession stand or we're doing this, we're doing that. We're not, we're not running a business. We're actually getting paid to show up. So the difference is when you, when you're growing up, you go to a job and it doesn't matter what the production is, you get paid. You get to pay the same amount no matter what happens. And so people can go to those jobs. And if they're somewhat lazy or whatever, they're still going to get paid the same amount versus you come become a real estate agent. Well, what happens is a lot of people go from working a W two through their teenage years in the early 20s or whatever to get into the real estate license. Now they're on a 10 99. Now they're their own boss. Now they've got their own, they got to do their own marketing, legion, conversion, all that stuff. And they're only used to just showing up and getting paid. They got to actually get paid on production, which is a totally different ballgame. Yeah, I actually had Ivan share on the podcast last week, and he's the top luxury agent in Las Vegas by like three X over his second. So like he owns the market. And I was asking him kind of the same question. I was like, okay, I get that most realtors suck and they fail, right? Majority do. And I'm like, well, to me, it's okay. They, they one didn't have clear expectations of how hard it really was, right? Like, Oh, I get my license and all my friends are going to use me. And this has got to be great. And then it's like, well, your friends have like 10 other friends who also have a license. Also, they know you're brand new. Yeah, they're not going to know like this million dollar, half a million dollar deal on their brand new, you know, brand new brother in law that just got their license. It's not going to happen. No, no. Then you start crying. You're like, why didn't you use me, you know, you know, uncle? And they're like, well, you never sold a house. Like this is an important transaction for me. You know, I've worked really hard to buy this off like, uh, yeah, people are stupid. So like, okay, the expectations aren't there, right? Then they get hit with reality and like, wow, this is hard. And then as you said, most might just fold and become inactive even though they have a license, or they just kind of struggle and they just can't figure it out, right? That's, like you said, 90% of people aren't doing deals. So, you know, I asked Ivan, I go, Ivan, what do you like, what should you do? He's like, honestly, you should just join a team. Like that's the best thing. You join a team, you know, they're going to provide the leads they're going to, you know, and you're going to learn. And yeah, you're going to pay a huge split because of it, but that's the only way to learn. What do you think? I think teams were good for some agents that need that, right? I don't think it's for everybody. I was never on a team. But I guess for that 90% who just for some people, right? So for the 90%, some, I mean, honestly, some of them, a lot of those aren't going to make it on a team either. Yeah, they just were never going to make it. But what you have to understand, if you are one of those agents and you do join a team, now you're becoming dependent on the team for Legion, for marketing, for admin, the backend admin and stuff. And the team's not going to teach you how to do those three things because they want you to be dependent on them, on them so that you stay and continue to pay them 50%. So it's kind of a, you're kind of walking a tightrope there, you know, with if you join a team, okay, are you a long-term team member there to pay 50% and just let them handle everything? Or are you trying to use the team as a stepping stone to learn what you have to learn to go and branch off and be your own agent at some point and start to develop your own business outside of the team. So you have to really look at what your, what the end goal is of joining a team because like some of these teams, you can't take any of the leads with you, any of the relationships you build, you can't take them with you, right? They have you under contract and they're not teaching you how to actually go out there and be an agent. They're teaching you how to convert deals for their team sales. You're learning sales. You're not learning your agent. Yeah, you're learning sales. You're not learning all the aspects of being a real estate agent, which again just comes right back to the same problem of going from W2 to being an agent, right? You're still dependent, you show up, they give you leads, no matter what happens. Yeah. Now you have to close them. So there's a sense of getting paid on production, but you're not even, you're barely tipping the iceberg for what you really need to know to really go out and be a successful agent or even team leader yourself. Yeah. So what I hear you saying and what I like in my mind think is that, yes, if you want to like transition from W2 into the real estate world and like be certain you're going to get a paycheck, not be certain, but more certain, a team is a good option because you're going to get fed, they're already producing. As long as you pick the right team, you're not going to have to worry about like going broke. But granted, your upside is extremely limited. You're only going to learn so much, right? Right. To me, the other alternative is, well, actually there's three paths. That's one path. Path number two is what most take, where they just try to figure it out themselves and they don't, right? Path number three is you get an actual mentor, right? Right. And the mentor is not giving you leads. They're not, you know, they're teaching you how to fish. Yeah. They're going to give you the skills and they're going to correct you when you're wrong. They're going to show you the process and the systems, which is really hard to find. Very hard in real estate. See, and this right here is a big reason why there's so much failure because they're like, we talk, I talk about this all the time with, with my group. They, there's not, there's nothing out there. There's not really a brokerage that's going to take a new agent and literally have them shadow experienced agents going out to get listings and on showings. You might find a little bit of that here, a little bit of that there, but it's very few and far between. And then like helping them like through, right? And they're like, the whole process of being an agent, it's really nowhere in terms of. Well, you've worked for a lot of brokerages, right? Yeah. I remember like Keller Williams making that promise and this company making that promise. And then like even EXP, you know, where you're at now making that promise. So like, what are they actually getting from these big brokerages that promise all this stuff? Well, they get a little, they get a little bit of it. Yeah. Right. And the problem is, is they, they, there's no, there's, there's, here's the problem with it. There's no real ROI on going out and doing all that for a new agent. Dude, I'm going to tell you my story of running my brokerage, but go on. And that's why brokerages don't go all the way. Yeah. They, they, they, you know, they may sit down and have a contract class. They may, you know, that you may shadow somebody a couple of times, but like they're not there when you're negotiating that first deal. You make a call them and say, Hey, what would you do here? What would you there? But there's, you don't really, there's no handholding happening. Yeah. And the reason why there's not, is because there's no ROI on it. Why? Because no matter what you do, okay? No matter what you do with the 90% that are going to quit, they're going to quit anyway. And so I'm telling you this from experience, right? I had about two to 300 new agents that joined my group like over the past six years, and I don't really, I don't, I don't bring on any new agents anymore. You're not talking your EXP downline. You're talking your zero diamond script. Everything, everything, right? Everything. All right. New agents can join zero to diamond all day long. You know, it's free courses, it's free scripts, it's everything like DME and all that. I'll help you. But as far as like holding a new agent's hand, what I realized through doing that so many times is that they still quit. I could spend all day, every day 24-7 with new agents that are going to quit, and they still quit anyway. And I could spend zero time with a new agent that's going to become a future top producer. And guess what? They still become a future top producer, right? They had it. I had a coach for about four months. Back in 2014, I made 600K. I wanted to make a meal the next year. And I was on track to do 600K again. And I was like, what's wrong with me? I was like depressed, making 600 grand. And so I not like the normal term of depressed. I was like frustrated, like, yeah, like, let's go, let's make a meal. I hired a coach for four months. And basically he basically taught me like caulk spires and stuff. I was like, okay, but he's a, he's a pillar of the industry. This guy, he's a legend. And we still talk. And that was, that was back in the 15 and 14 days. And like last year, I was talking to him about all this, and he was like, if you never hired me as a coach, would you have still been successful as you were? And I was like, absolutely 100%. And he said, okay, there you go. Right. There's the answer because you could spend all day with these new agents. And so a brokerage can't really go out there and create a program where they literally hold their hand because the winners are going to come up whether you do that or not. Right. So why put now we want to take care of people and we want to give them service and want to show them the way and all that. And, you know, we, we want to help them as much as we can. But, but there has to be some kind of ROI on the time spent. And there's just not when it comes to new agents, because the ones that are going to crush it are going to crush it whether you do that or not. Yeah. So let me tell you the dilemma I had, which lines up with that, but I'll add a different caveat to it since I have experience on the other side with what it's like to have skin in the game. So I had a brokerage called forever home royalty and we boutique, we built it up to 200 agents, right? In only a few years. So I tried everything under the sun to do two things. One, right? If I make my agent successful, that makes the brokerage more successful. So I'm like, okay, let's really value, you know, helping the agents grow. And mind you, we weren't like Keller Williams and these other ones. We were 100% brokerage. So they got 100%. They paid a, it was a $500 transaction fee and a hundred bucks a month. That was it. So it was just purely volume for us. And, you know, with that model, it's, you know, people are going to this model or people would come to us for various reasons. One would be just fees. They're cheap, right? So like, oh, this is cheap, cool. Two, me, because I was starting to become more famous. They're like, oh, yeah, I want to be at Ryan's brokerage, right? That was another reason. And three, they wanted to invest. They're like, look, I know this brokerage is pro investing. And, you know, I'm hoping to get some training or, you know, whatever, right? They'll let me wholesale. They'll let me do these things. So those were, that was our avatar. And it was a lot of younger people. And, you know, 90% of them never came in the office or did anything, right? And so like, whatever, you don't see them. And if they close the deal, they don't. And, you know, just pay the hundred bucks a month if you don't want to do anything, right? Then there was a set of people who came to our weekly trainings and, you know, they'd come every week, but they still don't do anything, right? Like they come to the training and you're like, I personally trained, you know, quite a few times. And I'm like, guys, this is how you do this, boom, boom, boom, social media, this and that. And like, nobody would do anything with it, right? So long story short, I was like, I'm going to do a test. I'm going to, I'm going to like basically start a team even though it wasn't a team. And I'm going to say, Hey, if you're a new agent and, you know, you want like real in-depth training, hand-holding, you know, we're going to start this program. And there's going to be a split on your deals. And it wasn't even a big split. It was like 30% or something. You know, maybe it was 50, I can't, it was 30 to 50%. It was like maybe a tier, right? For five deals, you're going to have a split for, you know, to get our ROI, right? And we had maybe like five to 10 people be like, okay, I'll do it. And dude, it was just like, I don't even know what the saying is of like, dude, just like trying to just pound and like nothing's happening. And then somebody finally gets a deal and they're like, well, does this count towards the split? You know, like this was already like a guy I knew before this. And you're just like, Oh my gosh, dude, like this is because they're worried about the 30% on the one deal they're going to do. Yeah, exactly. Right. And so I just was like, dude, shut it down. Like, this is too stupid. It's not worth the time. Right. And then I saw that side of it. And then like, I've seen it at wealthy investor where, you know, we've had thousands of students pay thousands and thousands a month, people have paid me six figures plus, you know, for various types of coaching, right? The people who have paid six figures plus don't even call me. Like they literally have access to me and we meet once a month. And they're like, yeah, dude, so I executed on what you wanted. And dude, like it's been crazy. The results, it's already made me my six figures back. Right. And then I'm like, okay, so here's what you got to do now. And then next month, boom, like they might send me a text here or there, but dude, they're like the least needy people of all time. And then, you know, we've had lots of students join our rookie and our all star program. And, you know, they've paid, you know, $10,000 plus to be in these programs. And sure enough, like their action takers, they're making offers, they're showing up to the calls because guess what? They got skin in the game. And guess what? We have more resource to train them better because we have ROI, right? And so you start to see why it works one way where you're like, oh yeah, when people are invested in themselves and they have actual like repercussion if they don't perform. Whereas like with the brokerage model, it's like, oh, if you don't get a deal, you don't get a deal. Like no harm, no foul. Right. You're just paying a hundred bucks a month. Yeah. Like they don't care. But for us as the teacher, it's like, well, we didn't make any money training these guys. And then they go and leave another brokerage, right? Because they're like, oh, these guys, whatever. Yeah, they leave the brokerage or they quit. Yeah. You know, and then you spend all this time on them. Yep. And so we've had, we had, we had a couple of new agents actually break through and become successful. Yeah. Right. Of course. Some of those left the company, right? And we still have some of them. But when you think about the few that we have out of the hundreds who actually became producers and we spend all this time on hundreds, the ROI is not there, right? That's why I shut my brokerage down. I'm like, it's just not worth it. You could have switched the business model, right? To more producer oriented, right? And they have to be doing 10 million or more a year, blah, blah, blah. I'll tell you the problem too with 100% companies. There's never any top producers, those companies. Because when you're paying $500 per transaction, you know, you think, okay, that's not a lot of money. But if you have somebody doing 50 to 100 deals a year, it is a lot of money. Yes. And they could work somewhere way cheaper. So the really high producers. Well, did you guys have a cap? No. Oh, yeah. So you could have, you could have these really high producers look at that and say, I'm not going to pay that because I'm doing all this volume. That's why you never see any really high producers at these 100% companies that I've seen anyway. And some of the 100% companies have kind of tried to go to a cap model. Well, on the 100% they're losing money already. Yeah. And then they cap it. They're really losing money. Yeah. I haven't really. It doesn't make sense. So the 100% models, they make their money, I think, because I know a big one, two big ones in Florida, they make their money on the ancillary businesses, the title, the insurance, the mortgage and stuff like that. And for me, that was always the thought of, hey, if they can help me get deals for my flips, if they go into our coaching programs, they use my tax. So yeah, that was the thing. I didn't never think that I was going to go get rich from this. It was honestly, and honestly too, I was doing so many flips. I'm like, I might as well get my own company, the exposure. Why am I going to go build somebody else's up? So there was a lot of factors on why we did it. But the main moral of the story was when incentives aren't aligned by the mentor and the mentee, you get terrible results. It just, if you have no skin in the game and they have no resources to train you properly and no upside if you do what you're supposed to do, even the upside is not really upside. Why would anyone do that? Who would want to mentor you? And that's why the bigger brokerages don't have the hand-holding programs to the level that's needed. It is needed. It is needed, but for who? But then it comes down to then the other side does work. If you're in a good education program. The agents who have sold properties and have gained momentum and broke through the 90% into the 10% who are possibly going to make this a career, you mean? Well, I mean, look, I can't speak for real estate agent programs. I can speak for a wealthy investor in that we've helped many, many people get their first deal. So these are people who had no real estate experience, just like a new agent, but we're not trying to be agents. We're trying to just get a flip or get a wholesale, get a rental. It's much easier than to talk a seller. Think about the process. You're trying to talk a seller, a property owner, into allowing you to represent them to sell their property for a percentage of what they're going to make. You're cutting into their price versus, I'll just buy it. It's way easier. It's a much easier approach. I never thought about that. You'll make way more money. And you can lose money. You can make money and you can lose money. Unless you wholesale it. And you're good. There's a lot of different ways to do it. But it's a much easier approach, honestly. And I think that's part of it as well. You have these new agents that are trying to literally talk sellers into giving them 5%, 6% of their property versus investors. They're just like, I'll just buy it. I don't want to eat your money. I'll just, the contact price is what you're going to get. Pay your closing costs. I'll pay mine and we'll pay your closing costs for you, whatever. We'll take care of it versus, let me get 6%. So you think it's easier to be an investor? I think it is from that perspective, absolutely, in terms of the conversation with the property owner. I think it's much easier. And that's the thing I want to hit home is that the 90% who failed, real estate didn't fail you. I was actually part of the 90%. I was an agent who failed. I was licensed eight years. Did you do deals? No. You didn't do any deals as an agent? No, I did. So this is what happened. From 2010 to 2012, I probably did, I mean, somebody could go fact check me on the MLS. I mean, I did probably, if I had to think, 20 transactions. And so that was it. And didn't make much money. And you were just pulling your hair out, like driving buyers around and dude, terrible. And also I was playing pro baseball. So I'm like, dude, this, I hate this. I just want to play baseball. Right. So yeah, it was terrible. And prices were low. So commissions were low. So anyways, I quit. I'm like, this sucks. So I start substitute teaching. That was a better thing for me than that. Then I start flipping couches. Then 2015, I get into house flipping. And, you know, I found my calling. I was like, dude, this is to your point, this is way easier. I don't have to convince anybody to let list, let me list their house or, you know, buy this house. I'm a buy it. And then I'm a list my own thing. So I actually did a lot of transactions, but they were all me. Yeah. And then by by 2018, I gave up my license because I wasn't listing anymore. Other people were finding the deals. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, from probably 2015, 2016, maybe 2017, I was using my license a lot and just getting that commission spread. See, that's the cool thing with agents, right? And like, like the deals that I buy and I get the commission, like these new constructions I'm buying where I'm getting 4% commission on them. Yeah. Right. It's like 13 grand. Yep. And I'm putting 100,000 down on some of these. So it's literally like I get a 13% return and meet instantly. You want to know where my last agent deal was? So I bought my house before my current house. This is at the end of 2018 new, new construction. That's why it reminded me. And it was $600,000. And I go, Hey, or no, no, no, they were asking like 580 or something. I go, Hey, let's bump the price up to 600 because it'll praise, but I want you to give me like a 6% commission. Okay. And they're like, okay. So they gave, they're like, whatever. So they gave me a 6% as a buyer's agent for myself. And so I got like a $35,000 commission, right? Right. And my down payment was a 5% loan. Okay. So you took no money out of pocket. Yeah. I got 6%. I paid closing costs. 5% down was from the commission. And I got into my house. No money, brand new 2018, 3000 square feet, freaking half acre sick. Now, did you have to have the money to put down and then you got the money back at the, at the credit, everything happened at escrow. Yeah. Because it was a private, it was a hard money loan. No. Oh, it was conventional and they allowed your commission to go towards the, so they allowed it. And then, um, yeah, so I didn't get taxed on it either. That was the great thing because I never received income. It just was credited on the settlement. Right, right, right. I made sure of that. And then, uh, from there, you know, I still own that house today and I refied it when rates were low. It appraised at, what did it appraise at? 1.2 million. So it doubled up. You didn't put anything into it. So did you live in it for a while? I lived in it for four years. Okay, you lived there and then you moved out. And I got my new house and now it's rented out. So my mortgage on it now is, uh, I want to say like 4,000 ish and it rents for 7,000. You never put a dollar into it. Well, I did do renovations later. Okay. But yeah, to buy it, I didn't put any money into it. Yeah. And how much did you spend on renovations? Well, it had a half acre of dirt lot. So I, I built a sick backyard. It was like a hundred G's. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, a hundred to 200 G's or whatever. Yeah. Um, 500 K of equity, you know, for no more than that, 600, 1.2 that 600, right? And your, your, your, your payments for, you're renting for seven. So that's 36 K a year coming in, like even off the 100, 150 you put into it's amazing cash on cash return, right? And you've, and then you, you refided and took that money and did something with it, right? That money out, you got your 150 out plus sum. It was just like the deals I was talking about today. Like I've got deals where at this point right now I have zero in the deal. Yeah. I've made my money back plus some and I'm still making cash flow every month. Yeah. Well, like I love trading up primaries. I've traded up primaries for 10 years straight. And when I was a realtor, I bought every single home except my last one with my commission, you know, back in 2014, I wasn't an active agent, but I found my deal because I always knew how to find deals. And then I used the commission as a part of my FHA loan that I got, right? So I basically came out of pocket, no money, did it again the next year, did it again. So you did it year after year? No, two years, every two years, every two years. Would you sell the house? Yep. So you saved a capital gains for living in it for two years and then upgrade again. Yep. So I upgrade. And then this, the current house I live in was the first house I ever bought primary that I didn't have a, but I also was off market deal, bought it for one point. What did I buy it for? 1.8. And the wholesaler made 200 grand on it. So think about that. The wholesaler, this is a perfect example of why realtors need to become investors. This guy is one of the top realtors in Vegas. Okay. I'm not going to say who it is. And he calls me up. He goes, Ryan, and this is why everyone should create YouTube. It's all full circle. He goes, Ryan, I saw you're doing luxury flips now. I saw your YouTube video because I had made a couple about it. He's like, I got a deal that's super weird that I think you'd be interested in. And I go, okay, let me see it. He's like, okay, it's easier if you just come see it because it's so weird. And I was like, I've seen a lot of houses, dude. Why is this weird? He's like, well, for one, it's in a community like this, you know, master plan community, but it's not a part of the HOA. It's been like annexed from it. I was like, that's weird. How'd that happen? He's like, he refused to sell to the developer. I was like, that's cool. And then I go, all right, what else? He goes, well, it's a new build, but the guy like can't finish building it. He's run out of money. So like, it's at the final, it's like 80% done. You get to pick all the finishes. I was like, that's perfect. That's what I want. So anyways, I was super interested. I go and, you know, I'm looking at it as a flip initially, not for me. I'm just like, yeah, we might flip this. And I look at it. I'm like, oh, this is super tight. I'm living here. So I ended up striking a deal with him. Now, if he as a realtor would have like wanted to represent me for the seller, maybe he makes 3% on me. And he would have sold it for 1.6. So let's say, yeah, whatever. Yep. So let's just say he would have made 45 K. Yeah, he makes 45 K. Let's say he double ends it at 6%. He crushes it 90 K. Right. But no, he put it under contract because he was going to buy it and flip it. And then he realized, oh, well, I don't want to go through the headache and I don't have the capital to do this. Let me wholesale it. And so he reaches out to me because he knows I buy and then boom, he wholesales it to me for 1.8. He had it for 1.6 makes 200 G's way more than he would ever made as a realtor and he had options. He could have bought it himself. If he wanted, he could have flipped it. But no, he made 200 grand selling to me. Now, I was very happy with the deal because I got a super unique property. I ended up putting 1.2 into it. So I was into it for 3 million bucks. It appraised at 3.9. And I got a loan for 3 million. So I bird it and got all my money out. And I gained, basically from that property, I could be a millionaire from one deal. Yeah, because you got 3 million and it's worth 4. But you had to have the 1.2 to finish it. So you doubled that up. Yep. Well, and even with the 1.2, it was a mix of private money and my money. And so it's like, not everything was my money to do the deal. Yeah. And then what about the seller who? The seller made his 1.6 and bounced. He was just, that's what he wanted. I don't care what y'all make. Yeah. Kind of deal. He's like, I'm getting 1.6 as long as we close. See, a lot of people are scared about that, you know, what the seller's going to think if you saw the see that they sold it for more and all this stuff. Look, I mean, people say that now, you know, we do, um, Novation contracts or net listings. And a lot of people are like, oh, net listings are illegal. You can't do that. And we're like, no, you can. Your brokerage might not do it, but they're definitely legal. Yeah. And we do that a lot now where we'll go to sellers and there's not enough spread to buy it as a flip, right? They want too much money, but they also want convenience. They don't want to show the house. They don't want to deal with realtors. They just are like, well, I want this price, but I don't want all the stuff that comes with listing it. And we're like, okay, well, we can't give you that. That's so common. So common. Right. That's the, that's the biggest thing going back to new agents. Yeah. And like the differences in being an investor and saying, how I'll buy it instead of, hey, let me talk into representing you and everything. Yeah. Even on the listing side, most of the owners, most of them are like, I'd sell it for this, but I don't want to list it. I don't want to go through all that, you know? So like for a long time, those were like basically non-deals until we started doing these net listings. And so what it came down to was, yeah, okay, we can make you a cash offer. It's this price because we got to make money, right? Oh, but you want, you know, market value. Well, then you're going to have to list it. And then they're like, well, I don't want to list it. And we're like, okay, so like really then, where's the middle ground that you're willing to meet? And they'll be like, okay, well, if I could get 300,000 for it, I'd be good. And so we'll look at it and we'll be like, well, the market value is call it 330, 340, you know, even if you sold it for 320, 330, break an even, that's how you get to 300, right? So we're like, okay, so if you get 300 net to you, you're good, you're square. And they're like, yeah. And we're like, okay, so what we're going to do, there's only one way to do this, okay? I don't even know what our team, how we refer to it, but we're like, we're going to have to list it, but you're not going to have to do anything, okay? You're going to sign a power of attorney to us. We are going to deal with the repairs, the negotiations, the signings, the inspections, everything, okay? Well, we will literally hand show a buyer into the house if they're living there, if it's an investment, then cool, anyone can go into it, but we will do everything, you do nothing, and you're going to get 300, it's just going to take us probably 90 days. Is that cool with you? And if they say no, we'll say, well, you don't really have any other choice, like you can list it and deal with all that crap, or you could take our cash offer for 250. Which one do you want? And they'll be like, well, I do need to sell it, and if those are the three, then that 300 sounds the best. I can wait 90 days, but I still don't want to deal with the stuff. So what we'll do is we'll go and list it, get it cleaned up a little bit, get nice pictures, go list it for 340. It's still in their name, they're still on title, they're still paying the mortgage, and we're just doing our best to get as much as we can, right? Now, we list it with a super flat fee brokerage of like 500 bucks a listing. So we still have to handle it. Our transaction coordinator handles it, it goes over some buddy's license, whatever, and we still pay the buyer's agent 3%, but like, okay, cool. We have like 15K in closing cost. And so if we can sell it for 335, you know, the net net is 315, 320. So it's kind of like a wholesale deal that you're listing it, you're putting it on MLS. Exactly, but we're getting a retail buyer. Yeah, you're getting a retail buyer through MLS. It's kind of like a wholesale deal that's public. Yeah, it's in that listing. I mean, that's all it is. Right, right. And so I guess the only question for me is, is how do you kind of bridge that gap from them not wanting to list it to where to, okay, well, the house is still listed. So I think it comes down to why don't you want to list it? Tell me about the listing process that you don't like. Right, right. And they're like, I don't want to put any money into it. I don't want people walking in. It's interesting because what's happening is, is you're basically talking them into listing it. It is a listing. Yeah, you're just, you're talking them into listing it, but you're getting it at a price that now you can work the margin. Yeah, and whatever we make, we make. And sometimes we might not make, we might make 5K, 10K. Yeah. And then other times we might hit it out of the park, right? But for them, a lot of sellers, and you know this, they want certainty more than anything. That's why they take the cash offer. They're like, so you're telling me, I'm going to get $250 like next week. I don't have to fix nothing. Yeah. They know they're leaving money on the table, but they're trading it for certainty. It was like I was talking about today. The ethics behind it, right? And agents feeling like they're taking advantage of a seller, right, in that situation. Now you're taking advantage if you don't do something like that. They're telling you what they want. Money is not everything. Price is not, you know, I think that's something agents get confused with. Why do I pay a nanny? Why do I pay somebody to do all this other stuff for me? It's because the money is not worth it to me to do it myself. I would rather have them do it, you know? And people, they think like, oh, well, if they don't maximize how much money is in their pocket on a day, there's a reason I buy Starbucks. There's like, the money's not important to me as much as my convenience is. That's like at the mirage, right? A bottle of Fiji water in the room is $18. The same bottle room service is $10. The same bottle downstairs you can just grab and buy is $7. Exactly. Right? Yep. And my wife was like, well, why is it more in the room? Shouldn't room service be more? They're delivering it to you. I'm like, yeah, but it's not right there. Convenience. Right? You can charge a premium for convenience. And that's what agents, I think, it's not about ripping people off or trying to, you know, swindle or get this deal. It's about helping them. Yeah. Right? Most agents are confused around, I've got to get the highest price for my client. Yeah. And it's not always the case, right? And that's why I try to go so deep with trying to make agents understand you have to get deep on why people want to buy or sell. Like the real depths of it, not the surface level, but the depths of what's happening behind the scenes in their life that's causing them to want to buy or sell. I'll give you another example. Like if somebody joins wealthy investor to learn how to invest in real estate, it's not about like, hey, we have to get you to making a million dollars or like we didn't do our job. We have to understand, hey, why are you coming to us? What are your goals? And there are people who are like, yo, I want to build a million to our business. And then there are others who are like, dude, I just want to buy a couple of rental properties every year. Like I'm very content with my W2 job. I just need to learn this. And we're like, that's great. That's what winning looks like for you. And then over here, this is what winning looks like for you. And so for a seller, it's like winning for me is not getting foreclosed on next week. I need to sell right now to a cash buyer. That's a huge win. Or I just, I relocated and I can't own two houses at the same time. I can't have two mortgages or my mother just died, right? And I live three states away and here's her house. You know, we've got to sell it. I'm not here. I can't fix it up. There's a lot of different scenarios. Yep. And that's why like when we started doing the net listing, novation, creative finance, whatever you want to call it, I mean, the net listing is the easiest way I can relate it. It opened the door for us to do significantly more deals on deals we thought were dead, on deals where we thought we couldn't help the seller. And now we both win. Like, because the seller, like we listen and we're like, what don't you like about listing? And they name it and we're like, okay, what if you didn't have to do that? Would you still be willing to wait 90 days? And they'd be like, yeah. Okay, here's how it works. Like you don't have to do that. We'll do it. We'll pay for the repairs. We'll manage the inspectors. On the inspection report, you mean the repairs, not like remodeling before? No, no, we're not going to remodel it. We might do some slight like a trash out. You know, stuff like that. Yeah. Now, if we were actually going to like do a full-on renovation, we would do that kind of, yeah. We would actually have them sell it to us subject to. So then we have control of like, I'm not about to go put 50 Gs into the sales. And then you'd be like, yeah, I don't want to deal with you anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And I've seen that happen. I know. I see realtors who offer that. And I'm like, I do too. I have realtors that call me and are pissed because they spend all this time, money and energy on helping this property owner fix their stuff. And then the property owner just sold it to one of their buddies and like cut the agent totally out of the deal or whatever. Yeah. Well, no, it's so nice. They live there. I'm like, I'm like, don't want me to like, I've seen commercial deals like this. I've seen primaries. And I'm like, don't offer them, don't offer to do anything. Yeah. Right. Don't offer to do anything because they have that option. Yeah. They don't, nothing says they have to do business with you because you're doing X, Y, Z. But yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting world, man. Like we've pretty much spent the whole day, you know, talking to agents, trying to help agents, discussing. You know, we've, we've spent the, so for, to give context to those listening, this isn't going to be released till far after this, but you know, Ricky and I hosted a challenge specifically for agents to help them get into the investing side. And you know, challenge went great, tons of value, and then him and I had lunch and we're just talking about agents. And I'm just like, man, how do we get them to understand? Because on one hand, people who want to invest, right? They all understand like, you got to invest money to make money. Okay. You're going to invest money in education. You're going to invest money in marketing. You're going to invest money in hiring people. You're going to invest money in, you know, your car and your appearances are like, everything requires investment to get an ROI. You can't have an ROI off zero. There's, there's no ROI, right? Now, your time is worth something as well. So some are like, oh, well, I'll just spend a bunch of time doing this and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, cool, you can spend time, but there's still money involved in everything you do. One way or another. No matter how you're building it, sweat equity still costs money. It costs money. To some degree. Yep. And we were just talking and I'm like, I just can't comprehend why realtors are the hardest demographic to reach. Because I don't have a problem getting some guy who works at W2 to be like, yeah, dude, I get it. I need to invest money in whatever it is to go buy a rental product. Like I get it, but for some reason, realtors are like some of the cheapest people I've ever met. I think they're just so focused on, we were talking about, it's like a mystery. It's like the eighth one or the world. Like I think that they are so focused on trying to build that business and trying to get it off the ground. While trying to pay bills, not selling anything. I think that makes them tight financially. Yep. A lot of them are still living paycheck to paycheck with their W2. Like a lot of these have kids that they're taking care of as well and families and stuff. And they're just very tight because this is like the dream. Let me be an agent. Let me get to where I'm making a million bucks a year. And they're just so focused on that goal. And in the meantime, while they're not selling anything, they're living paycheck to paycheck. Well, I don't even think they're trying to make a million bucks a year. I think like 100,000 a year is probably like what? In the short term, yeah, like most agents, they'll tell you my goal. Like they just got their license or like I'm gonna make 100,000. They'll tell you they're gonna make 100,000 this year. And it very rarely happens. Yeah, very rarely happens. But it does happen. I've seen people sell 100 deals in their first year. How did they do it? What made them different? They were super confident. They were willing to put the work in and make the calls and everything. But it was just the confidence. It was just their communication skill level. They were just already a good sales person. They were just a great communicators and super confident. And even that like one little blip, that little 0.001% of lack of confidence crushes agents when they go out and talk. And it's hard for them because they never did a deal. They don't know what they're talking about. You kind of have to fake it till you make it. You do. Sir, he had talked about that. Because like when he got his TV show, he didn't even do anything yet. He was like, yeah, I can do this million-dollar listing thing. It's like, I've never done a million-dollar listing. But he walked in like with pure confidence that he was the guy and you fake it until you make it. Yeah. Yeah, that's a big, big part of it. That was a big part of it for me. It was a big part of it for a lot of people that came up. I just assumed I was going to get the deal. I was going to succeed. I mean, I just assumed it. It wasn't a question. And I think that's the problem. A lot of people, most people question if they can make it or not. And that little piece of doubt, it crushes them because when they're talking to prospects, they can hear it in your voice that you aren't confident or you're under financial stress. Like a lot of agents, they'll get in. I've got six months worth of bills in the bank. I've got six months to sell something. I'm going all in. I'm going to do this full-time. I've got six months. I'll sell something for sure in six months. Well, here comes month three. You still haven't gotten anything even close. Now the clock's ticking. Which is completely normal. Completely normal. And so then month four comes, month five. You've got to put something on your contract 30 to 45 days before it's going to close. So here we are really at the deadline. And every call they make, you can just hear it in their voice. Like they're under financial distress. And it's the communication skill level and confidence. And I think that's the real, outside of working hard, doing what you need to do, the real differentiator for me, for the people that came in and just really crushed it, was their confidence level. How do you gain it? How do you gain confidence? It could be a net factor. It honestly could. Like you can get around people who are super confident. Like that's probably the only way. If you take somebody who's not fully confident to bring them to a fully confident, it's to be around fully confident people. Here's my thing. I think obviously there's going to be people who have the net factor, who have complete faith in what they're doing that they're going to crush it. And I have that whenever I enter something new. I'm like, oh, bro, this YouTube thing, I'm about to crush it. I have zero subs, but I'm going to crush it. And I did. And I think those people are rare. They can have 100% faith and certainty that they're going to just do it. And there's going to be hurdles and they're just going to plow through them and make it happen. But I do think confidence can be developed over time. Over time. By doing the right things repeatedly, getting around the right people. Like what I'm saying, education. You get around the right community of people who are doing it. You gain confidence from them. You're like, oh, freaking that guy did it. He joined when I joined. And he's right there. He's right there. He's standing there. He's breathing the same air. It brings so much clarity when you're around people who are on such a higher level in whatever aspect. It makes it believable. It makes it achievable. Yeah. And that's one aspect. The other aspect of, okay, now I got a blueprint. Like literally, this is what they tell me to do and they have the success that I want. I am going to do this. Yeah. If you cold call people for three hours a day, I don't care who you cold call. You're going to get a deal. It's a fact. You're going to get better at talking. You're going to talk to people. You're going to build your database and you will get a deal. Yeah. No, it's exactly what they do. So like people get in there and they're like, what's the magic thing? Right. The magic thing is what you could have just searched on YouTube. Right. Yeah. I think what, because when I'm like, why are you doing this? Why are you paying all this money and doing all this? Right. And the most common answer comes down to, because these coaching calls, because I had a coach for a while, these coaching calls are literally just mini little therapy sessions. They're just like mini therapy sessions, like tell me what happened and how are you feeling and what's going on. Let's give you a few goals and go out there and crush it. It's like, what am I paying for here? And what the people who love that stuff love about it is the accountability. Yeah. Right. Yeah. They love, somebody hold them accountable. Yeah. Right. At least there's somebody there kind of holding them accountable. And also a really good coach will, they'll know what kind of drives you. Right. They'll know what kind of drives you and they'll know how to stretch you. Right. Right. It kind of the right moments towards the right thing. Yeah. And I think that's one thing that they've probably gotten really good at is understanding each agent, you know, what their goals really are. Because like you said, people want different things. Yeah. I've got agents in my group that want to do two million a year. I've got agents that are like, I just want to make 100,000 a year forever. Yeah. And everything in between. So you have to understand what they're looking for and then, and how to stretch them. But it's kind of like when I talk to agents that won't cold call. Yeah. Right. And they're getting Zilla leads or their Facebook leads or YouTube leads or whatever it is. And I just, we start talking in deeper and deeper. And I'm just like, why are you not calling property owners? Like you're paying all this money to get buyer leads when you could spend way less money and the same amount of time concentrating on owners who also buy. They're the best buyers. Yeah. And I'm like, you get- Sell their property. Where are they going? Yeah. It's like, these are the most efficient leads here. They already own the properties. You can literally hack the entire system and just go here. And they're like, well, you know, I don't want to bother people or whatever their excuses are. Right. Whatever. And I'm like, well, when you call a Zilla lead, like most of the time they're like, who is this? And like hanging up on you sometimes. But I got to get once again, it's funny because like I tell people not to do this stuff. So I want to be clear. Like, you know, because I'll be like, don't buy Zilla leads. But then as a business guy, I'm like, dude, mad respect for Zilla for like building an empire. Right. Same thing. Like in my field, Dave Ramsey, you know, once again, I don't agree with like his philosophy for entrepreneurs, but mad respect to what he's built. You know, he was kind of the first one out the gate whenever mortgage rates shifted. Oh, he was like, you better keep buying the first one. Yeah. That that I was never a big fan of him. Yeah. I'm still not a huge fan, but he he got some points with me with that because it what he said has absolutely come true. Like 100%. And he like the day that mortgage rates started going up and everybody was like, you know, I've done a good job of predicting the market and stuff. But this guy was like, and it is like, wow, he's throwing some serious numbers out there and he was right on the money. It was nuts. So like mad respect to him. But what I was getting at is I'll talk to these agents that won't make calls and I have to figure out like how to stretch them into it. Right. And I'll figure out exactly what their situation is with this whole cold calling thing. And I'm like bingo. And so I'm like, okay, you're calling Zilla leads. I said, what you need to do is get a list of property owners and pretend like they're Zilla leads. Literally have the same script. Yeah. You know, like even like, I don't I don't teach this like script. Like this isn't in my scripts and stuff. But like you could literally call property owners and say, hey, you know, this is so and so with whatever real estate company I see you. We're looking at some properties online here recently. Just calling a follow up with that and see if there's something I could do to help you. Right. What's the chances that the property owners sometime in the last three to six to eight month back, we're looking at properties. I mean, that's the same script you would use with a Zilla lead. Yeah. I mean, you could literally it's all the same people. Yeah. Zilla is selling you the same people that dude, you want to get some funny so about maybe five years ago. We bought the entire list of Las Vegas. Everyone who owned a piece of property. Right. And you know, we've just been literally cold calling them ever since. So like I've literally we've made millions of dollars cold calling. And you know, people ask me like, so what list do you guys hit? What are you doing? And I'm like, what do you mean? What list? We hit everyone like everyone is a kid. You own a property. Let's do business one way or another. Right. Right. And it's just funny because sometimes we overthink it and it's like for me to get all that data. Yeah. It was an expensive one time thing. I've been calling the same list for years. How many people are on that list? Dude, I don't even remember. How do you call them all? Hundreds of thousands. Oh, oh, for sure. You've called them. But that's a team calling them. That's like a whole. I have not called them all. Right. No, no, no, no, no. You're not calling. But like, like that's a whole army of people calling. Yeah. Yeah. We had about eight VAs and it took you guys. How long to call through? Oh, we can go through them quick. Yeah. Like because they're just blasting. Yeah. In a month. Yeah. Because I always talk about agents. Like if you're a single agent, like how long would I take you to call all those? Oh my gosh. Just one person calling them. Right. More than that. I mean, that's if you're on a dialer every day all day long. I mean, as an agent, you're going to go show property, going to do this or that are that they're on. Whatever dialer all day long, eight hours a day, eight of them and army. It's like in 2021, agents bought, okay, bought 200 million leads in 2021. 200 million. There were 6 million transactions that year. Right. They bought 200 million leads. And I like there's 350, you know, 330 million people in the U.S., something like that. You bought everyone in the U.S. You take out teenagers and babies. You bought every single person in the U.S., right? And it's like, yeah. Okay. That's great. You see where I'm going? Like, like these. Everyone's a lead. These companies, yeah, honestly, just sold you every single person in the countries. I should just sell my list to everyone. Hey, these people have expressed interest that they want to buy or sell home. And that's what I try to get across to these people that buy leads. I'm like, you're buying the same people that are just, just live in your area that you could get for less than a penny. Yeah. You can get their information for less than a penny and just call them and say, hi. Right. But you're spending thousands and thousands of dollars on a random lead of somebody that might buy something or whatever, where this is a targeted, less than one penny person. Well, okay. So it's all the same people. It is. So what I will say is, you know, that form of prospecting is like the lowest form of prospecting in that, you know, it's all outbound. You have no idea whether or not that, like you're going to have to go through so much crap to get a deal, right? On the flip side, our most expensive leads are from a TV commercial. And so I've been running literally the same TV commercial for almost four years. I don't have a beard. I don't have colored hair. I'm wearing a suit. You wouldn't recognize me, right? And it still crushes and the leads are expensive. You know, a cold call lead might cost us less than 10 bucks, you know, at the end of the day, after we pay the dialers and all this crap, a TV leads going to cost me like 500, right? But I know that person who calls in from the TV commercial is like very serious about selling their home that we don't convert them all. But like the motivation is way higher. Yeah. So there is different levels of leads. But you still do both. We do both. You still do inbound and outbound. Correct. And if you're just getting started, you can't afford that, nor do you know how to run a TV commercial and all that stuff. So yeah, you are basically always going to end up doing outbound. And also too, outbound on your own is good to start out because you're going to learn sales. You know, you're going to get your reps in. So I don't have a problem like calling with drones or expires or, you know, whatever, right? People are like, should I just hire VAs right away? And I'm like, if you've never done anything, no. You should develop your skills. But at some point as you progress, yes, you should no longer call call once you reach a certain level. Because I still have a lot of... I've interviewed guys that are part of that school of thought that we're talking about. And they just, it's baked in them that they got to make their... What school of thought is that? Well, just everything, all these realtor gurus are teaching of just like, hey, wake up at 6 a.m. Cold call for like... Being agent, being agent, being agent. Yeah, like cold call for like six... How long do they cold call? I don't know. Three hours. Three hours. I like that. Yeah. Wake up 6 a.m. Hit the expires and whatever. Six to nine. I've never, by the way, that's absolutely... I would never do that. Yeah. Never have, never will. Me neither. But they still do it even though they're crushing. And I'm like, oh my gosh, dude. Like that is such a bad use of time. Yeah. The first year I made a million bucks, I'd never cold call again in my life. I mean, I like, I did because I wanted it so bad. When I got there and once I got there, I was like, okay, I built my business up to the point where so much residual business, you know what might be happening with those agents? What? They may not be building a database that they remarket to. Could be. Because if they were, then they would have so much residual business coming in, they wouldn't have to make the calls anymore. Right. And this goes back to the guy that died making calls. Yeah. Right. He didn't build a database that he didn't own real estate. He didn't own real estate. He didn't accumulate, but still he didn't accumulate these clients. He had past clients that came back to him and stuff, but he did nothing. He had really nothing in place to really bring those people back and to bring it back in a scalable manner where everybody remembers who he is. That could be what's happening if these agents are crushing it. They're just, and like, if they're following the programs we're talking about, it's more just close, close, close, versus try to build lifelong relationships with these clients. And I see that all the time, man, because if you're just in sales, you'll be in sales forever. Yeah. But if you're a great marketer and you're trying to build your brand and you're remarketing and things like that, then you can eventually get out of the sales game. So here's what my pitch has always been to realtors for a wealthy investor is that, look, at the end of the day, everything we teach you with marketing sales, it can be applied to being a realtor, right? We're both calling the same people. We're all calling the seller. Yeah. Okay. I ain't going after buyers, nor should you, right? Like we should just be going after sellers because that's the most efficient lead, except that our script and our sales process is a little different, right? We're like, hey, can we buy your house? Because we know we're going to make more money wholesaling it or flipping it or whatever, right? And then it doesn't mean we won't list it, right? If they're not interested in that, we can still pull back to the listing hat. So like on the front end of things, with marketing and sales, everything we teach is the, it's actually not the exact same because it's way better because we have like other ways beyond just calling expires, you know, like we're teaching how to actually do PPC and Facebook ads and direct mail and like all these forms of marketing. And then plus you throw in social media, which everyone ignores, you know, we're teaching that at an extremely high level. Which to me, I'd be putting a lot of effort into that as a realtor, you know, above cold calling and everything else. You know, if I could develop my personal brain and social media skills, that's going to make me way more than all the other stuff. But even with that being said, the other part that is different is that like, okay, but you're also going to learn how to raise capital and fix it up and deal with contract. Like it's going to make you a better realtor knowing how to do all those things. And then the big part, once you progress out of that, right, you get out of the stage of like, all right, dude, I'm doing deals consistently. I've been doing it on my own. It's like, nobody really teaches you how to grow a real business at that point. How do you hire? How do you fire? How do you hold people accountable, KPI's and build an actual organization? Yeah, right? We teach that, right? Because that's the only way to get to seven figures. You got to actually hire people and build it. So when I look at it, I'm like, look, you can freaking go to the whatever and that's fine, but I just, in my mind, I can't comprehend why you would want to. Why we would want to become like, like only real estate agent, commission-based business. Well, and learn that model of just- I don't either honestly because I've done so much investing my whole career in real estate. And as an agent, when I just see a deal, I buy the deal. You're looking at real estate all the time. All day, every day. It doesn't take any extra time, you know? But I like that we did this podcast because hopefully it'll kind of shift some agents and be a little more open-minded as they're looking at deals, that they're looking at deals to list and maybe looking at these deals to also buy. Because I guess my point is, it's like, it's still, you're still getting the core skill set that you want. Like you're learning how to market and sell. You mean with wealthy investors? Yeah, yeah, you're still getting that. But then you're getting all this other stuff that's going to make you way more money. Exactly, exactly. It actually teaches you how to be a much better agent. Because you're on the other side of it. And you're developing better sell skills. You're still generating leads. Right? You're doing all that. Generating more leads because you probably learn different lead generation techniques. You're actually learning how to add value to a property, what it could be worth. Understanding deals. Real key that make you a better agent. Things that you need to know. I'll tell you this, even though I was a bad agent, when I started becoming successful at investing, guess who started calling me? People, they were like, Ryan, I'm looking at buying a house. Ryan, I might want to sell my house. So even though I wasn't even actively talking about being a realtor, they saw I was doing stuff. And they were like, can you help me? Yeah. And I was, because I had credibility. Through the social media, they would see you and be like, and they were still thinking you were an agent, like want to help them buy and sell, you mean? Well, they just saw that I was posting about all my real estate. It was just activity coming in. Yeah, they're like, I want to buy, I want to sell or whatever. Yeah. Because I would post, I wasn't on YouTube or anything yet, but I would post on Facebook. I'd be like, hey, we just flipped this house. Look how beautiful it is. We've made this money. And then it was helping me get investors, really. And then it would get me some deals. But one thing it got me that I didn't even want was clients. Because it was like, and people were like, dude, I actually want to sell my house. Can you help me out? You know, I'm looking at buying a house. Can you help me out? And so I took a few of those just because it was easy. And then others, I just referred them out to people who could like really go help them out. But I was generating lead. Dude, we got a deal a few years ago from Jason Oppenheim. And he had seen one of my YouTube videos and sent us a buyer here in Vegas, a 10 million dollar buyer. And we closed it. And it was just like, did you represent him? Or did you? I was an agent at the time. But my partner closed him at the brokerage. That was a nice little check. I didn't get a check. Somebody got a nice little check. Someone got a check. But it goes back to even when you're just being active, you're doing stuff. Things are happening. Things are happening when you're out there, putting yourself out there, documenting what you're doing. You have more credibility as an agent if you're actually buying yourself. And I mean, I could tell you over and over and over again, me being an investor has helped me sell so much real estate because they know I'm investing. And it also helps me raise money and find great partners because they know I'm putting money in the game as well. I'm buying these properties with them, not just, hey, throw in this property. It's a good deal. I'm an agent. I'll get a commission. No, let's buy this together. I've got this great deal. Yeah. One of our top students, his name's Omar Alfaro. Shout out to Omar. He's been an agent for like 20 years. And he's also an investor, owns a lot of rentals, flips a bunch of properties, wholesale. But he said the same thing. He was like, yeah, I've been representing clients for like 20 years. Like I have a lot of relationships. And these people are now my investors on flips and other things. He's like, they just know I'm buying and doing stuff. So they want to do more deals one way or another, whether they're buying it or whether they're investing alongside of me. So like when I hear his story and I hear your story and I know it from first-hand experience when I was an agent, albeit even a crappy agent, I'm just like, dude, guys, get the I'm an agent-only hat off and come over here. Yeah, yeah. Some of my best partners were clients that I represented on a lot of deals before we even started throwing in together. And then I also have partners who are agents that are in my market. And we buy deals all the time, flip deals, everything else. So being open-minded to this opens up not only, oh, here's some deals I could buy instead of list, but I could also be partners with these people. I got this great investor that buys all kinds of stuff. Well, there's a great partner. You got this agent that brings you great deals. There could be a great partner there. So no, I think this really, I'm going to blast this because this is the direction I'm going in. When the first, the Tikes Summit, which was, that was in January, right? So that was the beginning of the year, which feels like 10 years ago. A lot of stuff that happened between then and now. But back then when I did a podcast with Brian, I said this year I really want to go hard with agents to become investors because 70% of them don't even own investment property. They're not even trying to own investment property. So I'm glad we did this. How are these top level agents? And I don't even, they are considered top level, but I remember when we had to have agents who made 200K, it was a big deal. They're like, this guy is crushing it. And you'd look at it as a total and you're like, okay, that's not really anything. No, it's not. And, but like that's the, what these 90% look up to. Like, do this guy? Yes. Well, it's the Steppenstone. Yeah. Like if I can get there, then I can get to 500, blah, blah, blah. And there's very few 500 guys and there's very few million guys. But with those guys who are making 200K plus, why, like I still don't comprehend why they're not much. Because they're still breaking even. They're still living paycheck to paycheck. They're going to pay 80, 90 grand in taxes before they write off stuff. So hopefully they've written off a good bit of it. They don't have to pay that much. But when you think about how much they're going to pay in taxes versus all their real estate fees and anything they put into their business, if they have an assistant, and then their normal living expenses. Yeah. They ain't got nothing at the end of the year, bro. Yeah. I mean, I remember making 200Gs and breaking even. I would have a little nest egg, but when April 15th come, that nest egg was gone. Like that paid taxes. So as a real estate agent, it's different. Like people need to get out of the W2 versus 1099. You're paying your own taxes. You are your own boss. You're the one that handling all that and 200 grand. That's just paycheck to paycheck, honestly. In today's world, especially with where inflation has went to. So you're not making enough to invest, bro. I remember making that much and wishing that I could go invest in some stuff. But okay. So let me give you another reason why they should invest. So when you're making 200K as a realtor, you're breaking even from all these different factors, right? And so they're like, I don't have enough money to invest because the typical realtor who doesn't have the right education thinks, oh, I got to put 20% down to invest. And so they don't do it, right? Whereas as we know, on the investor side, you don't need your own money to invest, right? If you're good at finding deals, you can raise capital to invest. And for me, every rental property I've ever bought, I've never used 100% all my own money. I've always used partners, investors, hard money, all these other things. And then I'll go and burn it out. And I own this thing without having any of my own money. And this thing now has ever much equity it has. And then over the years, I've sold off properties as time has gone on and been able to make fat chunks of money. And it's like the realtors who don't know how to do that just never get that. There's no excuse for it because you're renting somewhere. So you're paying rent somewhere if you don't already own your house. It's like that's the first step for me, right? Do what I did, 3%. 3%, FHA, use your commission, no money in it. I mean, if you have enough credit and a job or whatever to support to get approved for a loan, then you don't need any money because the commission's going to take care of the... 100%. Like you don't even need the down payment. Realtors have no excuse for not owning a property. No, not at all. Again, they're so focused on this one goal over here because they see these guys around town. Every town has those producers where you see their name on the billboards and on the buses or on social media and they're doing all this stuff. And so everybody kind of has that dream of I want to be that guy. And they're just so focused on that. They feel like anything outside of that is a distraction when it's really not. You know what I just added an epiphany on of that? You called those top guys producers. Just think about that. The best guys in the industry are called producers. Wealthy people aren't called producers. Rich business people are called investors, entrepreneurs, business owners. Producers has this connotation of I have a job that I have to work and I don't do it. And they are. Even if they have this amazing team and everything, you go be a team leader for a month or two and tell me how you like it. But just think that's the epit... Like dude, I want to be a top producer. And then they never think about what the next step is. They just think let me get there and then I'll figure it out. Think like, okay, once I get there, then I'm going to do this. That's never part of their business plan. Any age that you talk to, it's never like... You're in your own little bubble with other agents who are like, oh, dude, that's a top producer. And so you're like, I'm the best. I'm the top... Dude, I had to experience that too of like, okay, I was a great house flipper in Vegas. And I soon realized I was like, well, man, there's other real estate people who are developers. They have huge portfolios. They're investors. Like they're not house flippers. Like I have to go above this title of house flipper into the next thing or wholesaler. And then you do that and you're like, man, okay, now I'm building other businesses. People are starting to call me an entrepreneur. People are starting to call me an influencer and like these other titles that carry more weight. And you just keep moving up the spectrum. It's like, what would you call Elon Musk? Nobody's calling him a top producer. Like... I don't know what you call him. You would call him a serial entrepreneur, like one of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. Innovators. That's what you want to be. You want to be an innovator. Be somebody who's constantly growing and building. He's a builder. That's what he is. He's building companies and all these things. It's like, I guess when you're a top producer, what are you actually building at the end of the day? Yeah. If you got a solo job by yourself and like, have you really built anything? Hopefully at that point, there are buying properties. They're building their portfolio. Exactly. They're doing something. You know, maybe they've invested in stocks. Right? They're putting their money somewhere. Yeah. I mean, like with the wealthy way, we call anyone who follows it a wealth builder. Like we want to constantly be better. That reminds me of this guy. He's another older guy. I think he retired like five years ago. I don't think he's passed away or anything. Legend. I remember talking to him, bro. Like I literally just remember this. And this is something that was way back. I don't even know how this came up in my mind just now. But I remember talking to him and talking to him on the phone. He's like, yeah, Ricky, I was talking about a listing because they had a listing or maybe I had a listing he was calling me about. And at this point, I was like the king of the area. And you were a top producer. Yeah. The top producer. I was really producing. And I was I was number one by far. And this is a this is a previous like top guy. Yeah. And on his way out and he told me he was retiring and everything. And he said, yeah, he said, I'm calling it a day. I got a big old pile of money and calling it a day or whatever. I'm going to let so and so handle my stuff and everything. And like thinking back on that, now after like having this conversation and everything, I realized what he was saying and was that he had a big old pile of money. That's all he had. Like he worked and worked and worked and like got all this money and then just like put it in a pile somewhere. He didn't do anything with it. Yeah. Right. Because like, I know this guy, like you can look up stuff. Like he didn't own anything. He doesn't have assets. He didn't have, I mean, unless he bought a bunch of stocks or did something, you know, that wasn't local real estate stuff. You never heard about him buying anything or anything like that. And that just like reminds me like there's another story of a guy that was a top producer for ever a well-respected guy. And finally, like he had to been like 70. He called it a day with a big pile of money. And I'm thinking, dude, your money is worth nothing compared to what it was. You know what I mean? When you got the money, if you would have bought assets, think about how much more money you would have. Yeah. Like if you take 100,000 and put it in the bank 15 years later, what's it worth? Like in today's dollars, right? 80,000, 60,000, whatever. You bought, you put it down on a rental property. You got cash flow. You got appreciation. It's paying itself off. It's multiplied. Within 15 years, it probably doubled or tripled. Oh, easily. Right? So. So what do these realtors need to do, man? I mean, I know where we're like kind of like really harping on the industry inventing about a broken system. But it was much needed. It was a much needed event, honestly, for me as well, being in this space where I deal primarily with agents and everything. But at the end of the day, I want them to continue to be agents. If they want to continue to be agents. My thing is, is I'll go help you be the greatest agent in the world if that's what you want to do. All I'm asking you is that to have a more open mind when you're looking at listings, go list it. If that's the highest opportunity for you, they want more than what it's worth. I'll just list it and we'll see if we can sell it. But if you're going to run into these deals and you're looking at them before they hit the market, off-market opportunities in today's low inventory world, that's worth a lot. Imagine you can go get 100k in equity on a property you buy. Right. And I love your strategy where it's like, here's three options. Yeah. Right? I can pay you cash right now for 70 under. Yep. I can pay you or we can do this deal in the middle or we can list it for this. But the problem is, the brokerage number one does not want them to do that. They don't teach it, they don't know it. None of the realtor coaching programs would ever teach that method. Right? So that's why it doesn't happen. Yeah. Right? But it's also why I want you to go to Wealthy Investor. I know agents that do it. Yeah. I know agents that do it. But they didn't learn it from any of those sources. They learned it from either working with investors. They learned it on YouTube where they're in Wealthy Investor, they have another part of another wholesale and company or something like that. But they actually approach clients with the options. Yeah. I'll buy it for cash, I'll wholesale it for this, I'll list it for this, and those agents crush. Well, think about it from a seller's perspective. And they also, they end up, you know what happens? They end up keeping some of these properties. Like they'll flip some, but they'll also keep some. Yeah. But like if we both go, not you, but if I go to a seller and some random realtor goes to a seller, top, even call it a top producer, right? And we both go to the seller and we say, hey, top producer's like, I'll list it, I'll do all these amazing things, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I go, hey, you know, we got three different things we can do for you. You tell me what you want. Who has like more to offer at the end of the day? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it gives you another feather in your cap. But I want to say this too before we go, it's not all about buying direct from seller. Yeah. I've bought tons of stuff off MLS, listed by other agents. Yep. I've flipped properties. And this is another thing. Like if you want to really become a great investor, you've got to have really good relationships. And this is another reason why you shouldn't, like some agents don't like other agents and stuff, right? It's like, no. Like number one, they're selling your listings, you're going to work with them on their listings and they can bring you deals, right? And so it's not all about, you know, direct to seller and having the three options and stuff like that. It's just keeping your entire mind open and your eyes open to any possibilities that come across, right? MLS for sell by owners, other agents bringing you deals. I mean, I have agents all over the country that send me deals all the time constantly. And I do that, you know, you do it a little bit in the real estate space because I did. I remember when I was a realtor, I remember people would ask me, they'd be like, hey, what do you know about these pre foreclosures? And I was like, what are you talking about? Like there's foreclosures. What's a pre, I didn't know. Nobody had ever taught me. And they're like, well, it's where you get deals because these people are going to get foreclosed on. I'm like, I have no idea. Nobody's ever trained me on how to do that, right? And so then I had heard about wholesaling after a couple of years. And I'm like, dude, you can't do that. It's illegal, right? And I was very close-minded. And then sure enough, I opened my mind to this. Then I find myself constantly expanding my mind to what's possible outside of real estate. Like, oh, YouTube is actually like worth your time. Oh, crypto and NFTs are definitely going to be part of the future. Oh, this industry, AI, chat, GP, like if you're one of these, it's like we make fun of the boomers because they're so close-minded yet we do it. And it's like, man, you better be open to technology and like your competition, if I'm going in with three options and you're going in with one, we play a round of 100 appointments, I'm going to win. Yeah, yeah. And like when you're playing that game, you have such a bigger base of buyers too. Investors, like so if they did choose the option, we'll just list it for the highest price. Chances are you've got your buyer ready to roll, right? Where you can say, okay, if in fact they choose that option, like, okay, I could probably sell that with a phone call. Yeah, and if you're completely like, I think a lot of realtors might think it's non-ethical because you might be trying to steer them towards the cash offer. But the truth is if you could truly go in there with no agenda and just saying, hey, I want to do business with you, here's all three. I'm cool with whatever it is you pick. Like you will gain their trust because people can sense when you're trying to like push somebody towards something. And this is my big thing, right, is relationships. And that's my biggest thing, is not just trying to help them do what they want to do. And we tell them too on the cash offer, we're like, hey, you could list it for this or you could take this. There's a huge difference. Well, why is that? Well, here's our cost, here's what we got to put into it, here's this, and obviously we got to make money. And some people are like, yeah, I get it. I'll take it. You'd be surprised. Yeah, I've done it hundreds and hundreds of times. Anyways, dude, I think this was a great conversation. We're going to blow this up for the realtors, and hopefully it changes and opens some minds. And, bro, I appreciate you for being the example, the number one example of what a realtor in today's world should be, dude, because we don't want realtors to fail. Number one, we also don't want them to die on the phones. And I think everything we talked about here is how you prevent both of those things from happening. Yeah, for sure, bro. I appreciate you, man. Yeah, bro. Guys, hope you enjoyed it. If you did, make sure you subscribe. Go subscribe to Ricky's channel, too, if you're an agent. He's got a lot of great content. Also, if you're an investor, he's going to be doing more investor content. So check it out, and we'll see you then. Peace.