 Those are buyer activities. Okay. Those are buyer focused, buyer heavy activities. Okay. Right? So you're going to ask the music three or four things. What's your budget? What's your time frame? Are you working with an agent or are you pre-approved? Rule number one, he's like, don't listen to the haters. He said also don't listen to the people that are praising you either. Don't let that get too much to your head either way. It's the people that are sitting back watching your content quietly, not commenting, not even liking, but they love you. But there's no, like you just said it, there's no right or wrong way. There's not. You run your business. It's what makes you feel authentic. Even like, we could program the AI to automatically ask that prior to actually booking you on an appointment. And they watch it and they're like, man, this guy's good. Those are the people that you're really doing this for. You know what I mean? It's a huge opportunity. Anything changes is going to be a huge opportunity for people who are committed and are willing to work. When I lost everything, kind of like how we're going through now, this downturn that taught me, okay, you know, I've got to learn how to create lifelong relationships with people. Because you have so many expires, so many fizzbos. Just one percent, it's coming out in your tongue. What is going on? My name is from Calls Baronecci and welcome back to another episode of the Gold Bar Podcast. This time, we are going live from Las Vegas and we are switching things up instead of doing a one-on-one podcast. We're going to be doing this with four people at the table. So the person to the left of me, as you may or may not know him, is Ricky Karuth. He is one of the biggest coaches in the entire industry here to deliver value. Next to Ricky, on his left, we have Mr. John Sy, president of EXP Canada. And not only is John a top producer and a team builder, but he is a social media influencer completely dominating the landscape when it comes to the Canadian real estate game. And to the left of John, I'm not even going to try to pronounce his name. Let's just call him DK for now. DK is a top producing team leader. He pushes houses like it's his job and he has a ton of value to provide when it comes to this episode. So I'm extremely excited to get started. Let's get right into it. So listen guys, the thing is, that was a good intro, man. Good job. It doesn't exist. Good job. Good job. It doesn't exist. So we've got two agents from Canada and we've got two agents from Alabama. You're close enough to Alabama now. I'm close enough to Florida and Alabama. The Canadian market, the real estate market, like right now, you know, we've got high interest rates. You guys have high interest rates, right? We have no inventory. You guys have no inventory, right? We have multiple offers in some of our areas. You guys have multiple offers. Like what is the market there compared to... Do you guys, like you, I'm sure, know what the market is like in the U.S.? Is Canada going through the same thing we are with the real estate market? Yeah. I mean, where we are at, we're right now about five months supply now. Oh, that's a lot. It's caught up. So it went way up. What did it get down to? It got down to two months. Yeah. Yeah, beginning of the year. Yeah. In Ottawa, we've got over 5,000 active current listings right now. But if you go back a year ago, there was 2,000 active listings. So it depends where you're talking about. I'm in the nation's capital. So our inventory is rising dramatically because what happened was when COVID hit, all the builders shut down, right? All the labor shut down. And then when everything opened up, all the builders recommenced their builds. But all the people that bought those builds two, three years ago bought at 2%. Now that they're closing three, four years later, they can't close. So all the builders now have all this inventory. You got buyers, they can't close because the rates are like 7%, 8%. And interest is high, but inventory is also rising. It's something we've never really seen. Do y'all have 30-year fixed mortgages there? You can do a 30-year amortization, but it's a five-year fix. Every five years, you got to re-five. That's wild. Here in the U.S., we got 30-year fixed all the way for 30 years. A lot of countries are on that five-year rotating. It really changes the entire game. Big time. Cool. So you were saying that you're Greek. Yeah, born and raised in Ottawa, Canada. Podcasts were actually created. The Greeks created podcasts. What? Yeah. For sure. You guys don't know that? Like your great-great-granddaddy? Yeah. It was a cousin for sure. But Gutsopolis, I think, and they shortened it to podcast. Yeah, dude. How can somebody say, I invented that. It's like saying, I invented water. You know what I'm saying? No, Greeks invented water. No. He says that all the time, everywhere we go. He says, Greeks invented Chinese. Really? And you just have to be like, oh, come. Really? Wow. I was just proud to invent shit. No, no. So what are you up to right now? Like, what's your thing? My thing right now is I'm discovering that a lot of agents have a lot of problems with systems. They're going out of their way to build their entire status base. They're working their social media content game. They're going out of their way to run ads. And every agent is so focused on strategy right now. But all the strategy lead back to one thing. Them having to nurture the majority of the people that they actually stay in touch with. Yeah. And no one is doing that. So in a time right now, you guys mentioned inventory is rising and it's getting harder to close deals. I tell everyone, like, if you were going out there and making 200 calls a month last year and it was getting you X amount of results, you now have to go out there and do 400 calls to close the same amount of deals. Yeah. And where I'm tackling it is like, okay, I don't think I'm going to see double the production from agents anymore. It's not going to double their work ethic now. So what if we can help them build better nurturing and follow-up systems to go out there and do that for them? And I've been doing that with AI. We've been experimenting with me and Ricky. And like, it's been pretty cool. So how do you guys want to go ahead and see this conversation? You guys want to talk production? You guys want to talk about building your massive teams? Like, where do you see yourself as far as your business goes? I mean, I can just add that for me, it's all about skill because you can have all the AI in the world. You can have all the systems in the world. But when you finally make that connection with that person that's looking to buy or sell, you need to have the skill level to be able to pre-qualify and assess what their needs are. Correct. And the last two, three years, I'm sorry, but the majority of it was order-taking. So a lot of people entered the market that didn't really know what they were doing. They thought, okay, this is easy money, but really it's not. You have to have the skill. So we're focusing on fundamentals again, buyer consultations, seller consultations. For example, like if somebody says, how's the market? It depends. What are you looking to do? Buy or sell? Sell. Okay, it depends. What are you selling? When did you buy it? Because if you bought it three years ago, you bought at the peak. If you bought it 10 years ago, you should sell. But it also depends on what your motivation is, things like that. So I find that a lot of agents now are struggling because they lack of the skills. And that's really what it's all about because I don't care how many systems you've got when that phone rings, if you don't know what to say and you don't know how to help that person, they're going to move on. Communication skills. Actually talking to people. Yeah, but taking care of them, showing them that you care through knowledge and giving them the stats and giving them the facts so they can make an informed decision. What if there was a way to train artificial intelligence to actually have those skills to qualify people for you? That would be very powerful. What if I told you I already did that? I would say show me. You want to test it out right now? Do it live on the podcast? Yeah. You got your phone. Let's go. All right. Oh, that's going to blow your mind. I'm going to have you guys text this number right here. You guys let me know when you're ready. Ready. 786-882-9190. Okay. And say anything. Hello. Hey, what's up? How are you? Taxi and see what happens. Like when I started in real estate, I didn't care anything about like building relationships, how to talk to people. I was just like, let me close a bunch of deals because it was just like 2021 when I started back in 2003 and four. But then when I lost everything, kind of like how we're going through now, this downturn that taught me, okay, I've got to learn how to create lifelong relationships with people. So you're right, especially when the market goes down because a lot of these people, what do y'all do for buyer leads there? I mean, for like, you know, we have Zillow. Is Zillow there in Canada? Yeah. Yeah. There's no Zillow leads that we can actually buy. Who do you all buy leads from? We have Ylopo, you know, your usual. So like they just do that, right? Independent all their business on that. They're probably not doing that hot this year. I would imagine, right? The issue is I have, I think there's some value there, but everybody has the same leads for the most part. So my team... You get the same leads to everybody? Yeah. For the most part. Oh, wow. So it's coming up. I mean, each and every lead will register on five, six different websites and that's all going to different agents. So if you are not picking up the lead within five minutes, you know, it's bye-bye birdie, right? So if you're on that and then you have AI on top of that, even if you have AI, when you have AI, you still need to follow up. That's already doing it. Oh, yeah. I'm doing it right now. I'm having a conversation with your AI. Yeah. And it's... It's pretty good. It's kind of funny. You guys texted at the same thing. I'm looking to sell, but you can say looking to buy. So you want to buy in Canada. So you want to buy anything? You can just say hello and it'll be like, hey, how are you doing today? What can I do to help you? It's very cool. Yeah. Basically, so what we found is any single time that you're doing a buyer consultation before that consultation, you're qualifying them. Because you guys are experts. You're not going to waste your time going out to meet someone randomly. So you're going to ask them usually three or four things. What's your budget? What's your timeframe? Are you working with an agent or are you pre-approved? We could program the AI to automatically ask that prior to actually booking you on an appointment. And then once it books you on an appointment, it goes straight to a calendar. You have to do that regardless, one way or the other. Yeah. The issue is majority of these leads end up not turning out. Facebook leads, Zillow leads, whatever they may be. They're just not good. So now we set up the automation so that if you don't want to go ahead and buy in the next 90 days, I'll follow up with them for you for the rest of your life. So I am one of those people that do believe you could follow up on the automation and just get that entire process like long-term to be fully automated. But I am 100% agreement with you once they're ready to buy or sell. AI can't do that. AI can't take over and close. So I think closing is going to be remaining for the agents and then AI will kind of take care of the rest. You know, and when you know how to present, the close is natural. You don't have to close if you're a good presenter. Yeah. So often people say to me, I can't close. No, no, you can't present. Because when you present, you don't have to close. Correct. You know, the partners look at each other and go, honey, what do you think? What do you think? Yeah, let's do it. You don't even ask. When you get so good and you're so in flow, you don't have to close, bro. Yeah. They close themselves because you're presenting so well. And the real presentation is the prequel. The strength in your prequalifying shows that seller how much you care. Yeah. That's the real presentation. Whereas most people say, you got to sell. Okay, I'll be there too. Well, hold up. Hold up. Let me slow it down a second. Just like a doctor. Prequel, like the questions you're asking are you selling? Yeah, why are you selling? Why are you going? Well, people don't do the most new agency. Okay, I got to go. I got an appointment. Well, hold on. You got an opportunity. You don't have a real. And then the presentation is the listing presentation you're saying? The presentation for me is the prequel. The prequalifying. That's the real presentation. So it's like when I show up tomorrow, after you've asked all the questions, if everything I say makes sense and you feel comfortable and confident, we can sell your home. Are you ready to sign? Yes. No. Or maybe. Do you do a full blown listing presentation though? Over the phone? In person? Yeah, 100%. You sit down with a PowerPoint. It's just pre-mail them the package beforehand. They review it. We call them to ask if they reviewed it. So it's a pre-listing presentation, basically. It's a pre-list. So we show up at 20 minutes. Perfect. Yeah. And you already asked them three times when I show up, are you ready to sign? Yeah. Yes, no, or maybe. Okay, if it's no or maybe, no problem. I understand why. They give us the objections. Now we know what they are going in. Yeah. So it's power contacts. Yeah. That's what I call them, right? Power contacts. I want to go in knowing the intention is there. It's not just the CMA. You either got the listing before you even showed up to the appointment. Yeah. Like, as long as they looked you up and they looked at your resume and they checked everything out, like, they already know if they want to work with you or not. Agreed. You're just going there to kind of seal the deal. That's the way I see it. Agreed. Yeah. Mine was so different, dude. I didn't have any social media. Yep. I barely had a website. I never did pre-listing or listing presentation. I did one listing presentation. I was like, this is awkward. Yeah. I'm never going to do this again. And I was like, well, I thought about it. I was like, all right, would I give, if this was my mom, would I sit down and make her watch this PowerPoint or would I send her a pre-listing package? And it was like, no. I'm like, why am I, I should be treating everyone like they're my mom or dad. Yep. And so I was like, I'm never going to do this ever again. And I didn't really have anywhere where people could go. I didn't have like testimonials anywhere or anywhere where I could find anything. So it's like, there's so many different ways you can do this thing. You know, you've got to figure out what works for you and what makes you feel comfortable in the process and everything. So how you say you're a team leader. Yeah. How many is on your team? Just myself and three other agents and two admin. But there's no, like you just said it, there's no right or wrong way. There's not. To run your business. It's what makes you feel authentic and genuine. Even like strips, you know, I'm like, you know, like it quit trying to like set the appointment, you know, and just figure out why they want to do something and try to help them do it. Yeah. You know, but the appointment thing works for a lot of people too. You know, there's so many different ways picked up this year. So far, I think it's about 80. We're on track for 110. Nice. And that's an uptick from last year. Yeah. Because inventory has rose across the whole market. So I love this market, just to be clear. This is like the perfect market. There's so much opportunity guys. So like I started in 2009, which the market was, you know, a buyers to balance market. That's when the real skill comes out because you have so many expireds, so many fizzbows. That was a fizzball killer, bro. So I love that because now the value shows. They're not just giving it to their cousins, friends, sisters, and who got their license as a favor. Now they need the results. So just to be clear, I love this market. What was your first sell-by-owner like pitch to just get so many for sell-by-owner listings? You know what? My first fizzball that I ever got, I was door knocking with my son in the stroller. And I knocked on their door and I said, hey, when do you plan on hiring the right agent for the job of selling your home? And she turns around, she goes, is that a baby? I said, yeah, I need diapers. You plan on hiring the right agent. And she laughed just like that. She didn't sign right there, but four weeks later she did because I followed up every week. Hey, have you tried this? Have you tried this? Have you tried this? I kept giving her value, giving her value. And then I double-ended it, made $35,000. I'm like, this is amazing. How long was the follow-up process before you got the listing? Four weeks. Four weeks. I tell everyone, it's usually between like four to eight contacts before you actually go ahead and lock it down. It's such a follow-up game. It's all in the follow-up. So let me ask you this. What if you automated the follow-up with AI? Yeah. I'm all about AI. How were you following up? You were calling them or texting them? Calling them and dropping by. I was new, right? So I didn't have much going on. Correct. So my whole focus was on getting that listing. Yeah. So you were calling. I was calling and I was also dropping by. You can't really use AI or to drop by or call. Yeah. We could use voicemails, give to campaigns. I would just be like, are you doing an open house on Sunday? They're always saying, yeah, cool. And I'd drop by the open house. Yeah, get face-to-face, just keep building relationships and everything that way up. Yeah. On average it used to be seven to eight follow-ups. 11 years ago now I find it's more. Really? Yeah. It's taking longer now. So what would you do? Create a voicemail that's like, hey, is Ricky checking in with you? Yeah. Or whatever. We're working on a for-sell-buy on a follow-up campaign. That's why I ask. And basically we can record the entire voicemail. Anything you're going to say to one for-sell-buy and you're probably going to say to the next, you can just customize by changing their name. And then you just go ahead and you record this voicemail. It'll go out over eight weeks. So record a different voicemail for each one you did with a different name? A good one is Monday. So let's say, hey, just checking in to see how your open house went. Yeah. How many offers did you get? It's almost just as quick, just a dollar number and leave the voicemail. Well, what if you just recorded that and we sent it out to 30 for-sell-buy owners at once? Well, you can't. You said different names and it's recorded for each person. If you want to customize it, yeah. Right. But if you want to go out to the masses, like that would be closer to your mic. Oh, cool, cool. Yeah. I would love to collaborate with you on that to give you some scripts and then, yes, we'll send a business card with a note card in the mail. In the mail. Okay, cool. For a fizzball, yeah. And then emails or anything like that or just use CRM that does some automation until they respond. Okay. Are you still doing for-sell-buy owners? Yeah, now. But the last three years they were all selling. Now that the market's softened, it's back. This is like for-sell-buy owner lad. Yeah, it's cold. Shane is listed like 50 for-sell-buy owners this year. 10 this month. You need our help with this? Shane Noblin in North Carolina. These people need our help. Yeah. So we got to do that. Did he use AI? No. No. It was just straight up following up. Yeah, he calls like he's a master dude. He's just like, I was driving by your house and I saw your roof and he'll say something about the roof and it's nuts what he does. He customizes every little contact. Oh, man. He'll find them online on Facebook or like when he calls agents or when he calls anybody he looks them up and he finds something specific about them and then he'll call about that. Oh. Yeah. Like he spends the time to figure out one little thing he can call about, you know. That's smart. And he crushes it. He calls less people because he has to do more research but they're way higher quality. So he's going deep with people. He's going deep. Yeah. And he keeps going deep. He just goes deeper and deeper and deeper. What do you think about that like transactional these days versus relational? What do you mean? Like, you know, we're taught to go wide, you know, talk to a lot more people. You need to double up on your actions. Okay. But, you know, these days it's almost like you said, you have to go deep with people, less contacts, but go deep with people like you said. I think you can do both. Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean like as you're making your calls or making your contacts or whatever, you know, like throughout like what do you, how long are you going to make calls for? Let's say four to five hours a day. I mean, dude, even if you're going to have a conversation, it's going to last say 30 minutes tops. Yeah. You know, and then get a bunch of like three minute conversations in then another 30. Like, you know, I'm saying you've got plenty of time to do to go deep and wide and like going deep and wide means working on your short-term business and long-term business at the same time. If you have a system in place that nurtures everybody forever that you ever talk to. Right. And most people are either, they're either working the short game like just close the deal and I'm going to forget about you. When really the people that they're saying forget about you too, those are the clients that buy later. If you would accumulate all those, would like triple your business in three years. Yeah. You know, as they come back around to you when they do decide to do something, most people are just working one or the other. I see as like you have the database in itself, which you should be nurturing. Yeah. As much as you can as frequently as possible, as automated as possible, you don't really invest money into it. Then you start investing into the relationship, messaging them on birthdays, buying them gifts, client adversaries, stuff like that. Yeah. So you have your VIP list and then you have your database and I tell everyone, nurture your database as passively as possible with email, text and voice. It doesn't cost you a single dollar. It runs automatic and then once they go ahead and they transact with you or they refer you business, start investing into them the same way you invest in Zillow or another like online real estate platform. I think the key is, yeah, I love what you said but the whole transactional thing, right? It just got started. I wanted to get to 100 deals. Like I was obsessed. I got to crush that 100 deal and then I got to it and then I realized, shit, you can succeed in making a transaction to fail in making a client. Yeah. And that was me. I was doing a lot of transactions but I don't know if I was succeeding in making clients. Correct. Yeah. Because I'm like, why are some of these people not calling me back after? So when I switched my mentality to, like John said, like making it more about not about the transaction, make it about the person. Correct. Like I used to have team goals for example, we're all going to Vegas on my dime. Yeah. Whereas now it's complete. We don't even talk how many deals can we do? It's like how many Google reviews can you get this week? Yeah. Because that speaks more volumes than anything else. Correct. So what were you saying like transactional versus relational? Where were you going with that? Well, I think we need to be relational. Okay. And everything's built on relationships these days. It's relationship marketing instead of, you know, just get a lead, call them, transact. I call them one time. If they don't answer, what am I going to do? Chase somebody, chase a ghost? See, here's the thing, when you call somebody over and over again that just continues not to answer. Yeah. Right? Yeah. You know, each dial is so crucial. Okay. Because of the ripple effect like the long-term snowball of that. Right. So like that dial was just wasted on someone who possibly probably is not going to answer because they haven't answered the last two or three calls. That way people ghost because you just not providing value. No, they ghost because something through a red flag in the communication. Right? For example, I'm not really ready. You being what should be professional isn't picking up on the clues that I'm not ready. Right? Because I'm a nice person. I'm basically kind of saying, it's kind of like, you don't, you know, like somebody wants you to come to dinner. They invite you to dinner. And, you know, you probably can't go. Chances are, you're probably just not going, but you're like, I'm going to try. Right? And then the person's like, well, you know, they hit you back. They're like, what you think you going to make it or not? And back in your mind, you're thinking, no, I'm not. Then you're like, oh yeah, I'm blah, blah, you know, it's the same thing with clients. They kind of like, we'll kind of lead us down this road. And then we don't really pick up on that with our lack of experience. And then, and then now we're trying to set ready to do anything. Now this person's trying to get in here and make everything move real fast and go to a contract and let's set up a consultation. And I'm not even ready for any of this stuff. I'm just not going to answer the phone because this guy's weird. He's not even picking up on what I'm saying. He's not listening. That's one thing. Another thing is just like, along the same lines, just not connecting with the person. You know what I'm saying? That's what I'm talking about. Relation versus transaction. And it's just like, they just feel like this cold. They don't, they feel like it's just, they can feel that it's transactional for you, even though you feel like you're articulating how much you care about them. You don't realize that that 2% transactional you're trying to make it really was like stuck out like a sore thumb in the whole situation. And the prospect's like, I can go find an agent. I feel 100% comfortable with it. Like really has my back because there's so many agents. That's the thing. Like they feel like they can ghost an agent because there's 10 more, you know, right here trying to talk to me too. So why, you know, why am I going to give this a chance when you hear that again? You said the 2%, you think you're 98% relational, but the 2% that you're transactional gets magnified. It's the same thing with confidence. Like, like if you're not 110% confident, then they see it. If there's 1% of you that doesn't believe like that you can sell this house or, you know, that you're confident in whatever, just 1%, it's coming out in your tone. It's coming out. You don't realize it. You go back, you go back home to the office and you're like, what happened there? Right. What did I do wrong? They went with another agent or they ghosted you and you're like, what happened? You know, but you don't even realize it, but from their perspective, you're just this desperate, unconfident, transactional person, but you perceived it as this professional, relational, trying to help somebody. You're doing everything your coach and broker told you to do. You know what I mean? So that's where like the line is between like people failing and not failing in this business. Especially in this market. It's that 1%, 2%, lack of confidence or, you know, being transactional. I don't know. How would you advise them to slow it down and really listen then? Because most people don't. It's from it's from volume of conversations. Okay. You know, and like people have like hundreds of conversations and they're not quite there and things aren't clicking on all cylinders and they're like, it's not happening for me yet. It's like, keep going, get to a couple thousand and you know what I mean? Like you just need a little more experience in front of people. I would suggest I think everybody as a real estate agent as they're getting into real estate, like a good like full-time job while you're trying to become an agent, it's to serve tables. I love that you said that. To go and serve tables because like you're walking up to people, you have to walk over there to this table, people you don't know and greet them and basically get this conversation that's back and forth going about what they want to drink, how they're doing. It's like a perfect exercise for like a future real estate agent. I think everybody should roof houses too for about a year of their life. I'm not going to go to that hardcore with it, but yeah, that and reading some books on communication. So I love what you said because I'm Greek, come from the restaurant background, right? But I did retail. When you do retail or in the restaurant business what do you have to do? Talk to people. People want to deal with people that are like them and people want to deal with people that they like. Knowing that, you got to work on your versatility because when you, otherwise you're only going to get 25% of the people who are like you but the problem is there's 75 of the people are nothing like you. So the chances are, well, number one, let's just, you can't motivate anybody who's not motivated. So if they're ghosting you, could be there's not motivated and they see that you are going to get the job done. So maybe they're like, shit, this guy's going to actually get my home sold. That's exactly what I'm saying. They basically are saying, I don't want to sell. You're not picking up on the queues and they're like, this guy's moving too fast. I'm just going to block him or call the cops. You're not treating them the way they want to be treated. So like the engineer doesn't want to be treated the same way as the, you know, actor does the engineer wants facts and figures and drivers like, let's go, let's go. Like how much, how much is the house? How much you charge me? When you start learning the versatility on the different personality styles, my income at least went from 300,000 to a million in one year because I learned that I was treating everybody the same the way I want to be treated. Where did you learn that was like through a book a coach like, where did you actually like get the training for that? Well, I started to assess why is my closing ratio so low? Right. And I realized the people that I wasn't closing were similar and not similar to me I talk a lot as you can see. And, but not everyone's like that. So I was like, why am I not being able to convince the amiables or the specifically drivers and analyticals like I was repelling them with my talking. So then I learned, okay, they want facts and figures, the analyticals like the engineer, the accountant, give them what they want and then I can show them, hey, he's like me, he likes facts and figures. So it was, it was books, a lot of books and hanging out with a lot of people like, you know, like John and I have very different personalities, but we were also on the same trajectory, which shows you that people with different personalities can be successful in real estate with completely different personalities, but we were getting the same results. So when you hang out with people that are different, you work on your versatility. Dude, it's like the energy. I love coming to Vegas because like soon as I'll land, bro, it's like, I know there's some ballers around here. Number one. And then I hear music and stuff. And I'm like, this whole, this place like energizes me. I'm like, let me, and like just being around ballers, people like hard workers that have done things, it just rubs off on you. Now, if somebody, dude, if somebody calls, if I go somebody and they keep calling me, I'm calling the cops straight up. Like, dude, I am like stage five Klinger. Like, I don't want to do anything with you, bro. You know what I'm saying? So like, when they ghost me, I call, I mean, I call them like once and that's it. They're on my weekly email. You know how many buyers ghosted me after I showed them property? Like, for a week straight, ghosted me, never heard from them. Three years later, they call me and I see their name on the caller ID and I'm thinking, okay, here he is, right? Here he is. Because I remember who it is. And I'll answer and they say, hey, Ricky, you know, remember me? And I'm like, yeah, and they're like, okay, we saw this property over here. Want to buy this property and they'll go buy property. And then sometimes they'll be like, hey, I just want to, you know, say, you know, if you don't want to work with me, that's fine. You know, I'm sorry for whatever. Yeah, some of them have said that and I'm like, no, it's no big deal at all. And I feel like I'm in the driver's seat now. You know, and I'm like, well, but I'm like, oh, no, I'll work with you and everything. You know, I'm not going to go to me, never talk to me ever again. So as long as we're on understanding that you're not going to do that ever again, we're good. How do you feel about putting them on the contract to have a buyer exclusive agreement with them? Do what? Do a buyer exclusive prior to working with them? I don't do buyer exclusive. I've never signed a buyer exclusive. I've never been on a listing, presentation, any of that stuff. But you don't think that would help with it? No, because they can walk away from that too. Yeah. They can walk away from that anytime they want to. So all that's going to do is put a wedge in between the possible relationship saying, we're friends because you're signing this piece of paper. Hey, I'm going to help you because you're going to sign this piece of paper. You have to sign that piece of paper for me to want to help you. You know what I'm saying? If you want to walk away from doing business with me, then that's the risk that I'm taking as a real estate agent helping somebody. You can still walk away even if you sign this. So why am I even going to have you sign this? You know what I'm saying? No. And everyone's trying to get them to sign that paper, right? Not me. And I tell people, I'm like, why? It's just like the amount of clients you'll lose. Let's say you lose 10%, 15% of the buyers that you put that in front of because you did that. You know how many millions of dollars that is over the course of like 5, 10, 15 years in your business that you lost because of that motion where if you wouldn't offer that and just helped everybody do everything, the ones that are going to go use somebody else are going to go use somebody else no matter if there's a piece of paper signed. It's not going to stop anybody. So in Canada, they're changing the law in a couple of months where if you don't have a buyer contract with a buyer, you can't show them another agent's law. I think there's some states here that are like that. It's like mandatory. Okay. Aren't there states here that do that? Not that I'm aware of now. I was, you know how agents are. I'll say, don't do buyer agents or anything. They're like, our state makes us do it when probably don't even make them do it. You know, just because they want to get me. But, but, you know, it may or may not, but dude, if it's a law, that's a whole different thing. It's like, I'm sorry, but you got to sign this for me to be able to show. That's different than it's my option. You know. Yeah. So what do you think about this? You know, they're probably going to switch it around where the buyers have to pay the buyer's agents now. I don't think they're going to switch it around. I think that, I think that that's very out there if that were to happen. I think that I think that the lawsuit is, is this happening in Canada too? Or just here? Well, I don't know what's happening in Canada. Okay. But here, there's a lawsuit where basically a group of owners, you know, are suing these, you know, huge corporations. It's like, there's a bunch of mom, Paul's out there, brokerages that are doing the same thing. Why are you not suing them as well? Well, because they're not huge billion-dollar corporations that they know they can get to settle for 55 million dollars. Right? It's all just a money grab. Like, they did the deal. They were happy with the deal. They hired a listing agent to sell the property for 5%. What the listing agent does with the money that you, that's like saying, okay, Mr. Roofer, you want to roof my house for 13 grand, go for it. They do it. A crew shows up. You pay the guy 13,000. What he did, if he paid the crew 9,000 out of the 13, because he subcontracted it, it doesn't matter to you. Right. You sign a contract or whatever a quote to get the job done for a certain amount. So it's crazy that this is even happening. But now, anywhere, offered to settle out for 83 and a half million, Remax offered, these aren't final, right? Remax offered to settle out for 55 million. It's like, wow. Like, the whole thing is crazy. And then these companies are now offering, like it's up to like 130 million, 140 million that two companies so far are still in the lawsuit. A couple other ones are still in the lawsuit. And now everybody's like, well, if this lawsuit goes through, then buyers are going to have to pay their own commissions and all this and all that. I don't believe that. I think what's going to happen is there may be a few extra disclosures that has to be signed so that it protects everybody and business will go on like normal. If worst case scenario happens and buyers do have to pay the buyer agent fee, who cares? I mean, okay, you got to pay me now, right? Like in Australia, they operate like this. In the buyer agent, what happens is the listing agent gets the listing and normally the buyers come straight to the listing agent, right? And there's really no representation for the buyer, you know? That's what's going to suck out of all this if something, worst case scenario, happens. But the buyer, down there, the buyer agents, what they do is they take a retainer, you know, 2,000, 5,000, whatever it is up front and then the remaining, if they get the deal done, but they take an upfront fee, right? They take an upfront fee like a lawyer, what a retainer and then they go out there and get to work for the buyer. They've paid them some money, you know, now I'm going to get to work for you. So, I mean, if you're a buyer's agent, heck, you may be getting paid up front. You know what I mean? The job done, getting you the home, you're paying. The fact of the matter is though, like people are still going to buy or sell, people are still going to want to be represented and the industry will find a way. I was even saying that mortgages may create a product that figures in the buyer agent a fee. People are commenting on my video like, oh, that's crazy. That'll never happen. It's like, what did you think 40 year loans would happen? Did you think 1% downloads? Like, they'll do anything. Like, if something happens, like the government and mortgage companies, they'll figure out a way to make this whole thing work, but it's just a non-issue, bro. Are you worried about it? No. You know, things do change all the time. We just are resistant to change. We don't want to change, right? But when it comes and then you get used to it. You got to flow like water, bro. You got to flow like water. Do you water, my friend? If something happens, you mean, okay, what is the industry like? What's the process now? Okay. I'm going to crush that. Yeah. I mean, show me how this is going to be done from here on out. You got to learn to control the controllables. So if I don't have control over what's taking place, if it's something above my pay grade and the government's imposing this, why am I stressing over it? I can't control it. What I can control is what I do and how I react to what happens. I can't control what will happen if it's outside of my universe, right? If the government's imposing it, I can't do shit. All I can do is control how I react to it. I'll figure it out. So while everyone else is freaking out for six months, I'm figuring I'm going to pivot and just keep going. You can't freak out. It's kind of like if agents go like completely, you know, kind of like travel agencies. Travel agencies, right? The brick and mortar, the travel agents. My cousin's actually a travel agent. Like he makes good money, actually. They're still travel agents. Yeah. Like it's all online and he gets all of his customers that way and he organizes and books their trips and he makes good money. But there's a lot less of them, right? It's a completely different industry. And there's that in the other. But there should be less of them. If you're not good at it, get out. So I'm Greek. Born and raised in Canada, but I'm Greek now. We made that super. Well, hold on. I got a point. I got a point. My point is I went to Greece for a month. I hired a travel agent. Why? Because I'm too busy. I don't know every island in Greece. I don't know all that stuff. So I even hired a travel agent because I'm too busy. And he's there. He's local. And he figured it all out. We paid him a fee and we were happy to. Yeah. I think that right there, the fact that travel agents still exist on a smaller scale, of course. But you have to understand the ease of booking a trip online is it's not the same process as buying a house. Yeah. I just, I just, I don't see that. But if it did, where did all the travel agents go that got out of the business? The real estate. That was an easy one. You did that often. I don't think so. They might have, but they, the point is as they went off and did something else productive, especially the ballers, the hustlers, the ones that, you know, you think the ones that are in the business right now are making more money than the ones that were killing it before. Like, I do, I do, because you got digital marketing. Yeah. Way more market share. Yeah. Right. Digital marketing, way more market share. You know what? It's probably a growing industry. Like, I bet you travel agents, like the number of travel agents is actually like it went away and now it's settled out. And I bet you the number of travel agents are actually growing. Yeah. I bet you. Well, listen, I'm a big nightmare. Like, if I have my assistant do it or I have Geo try to set it up, like just the time, it takes like an hour, hotel, flight, car, everything like, but organizing the entire thing, if there is a way where they could actually save you money, which in essence, your time is money, right? Why wouldn't you hire one? Like, hey, we're making a good, pretty good, what do you call it, argument for the travel agent, you know? Yeah. I don't think agents are ever going away. Yeah. I think there's always going to be people that need to do. But if they do, bring it on. You know what I mean? That's like the market. And I'm like, prices aren't going to go down. Price is going to keep going up. And, you know, buy houses and people are like, oh yeah, this is going to age real well. Well, I'm going to save this video forever and I'm going to show you when the market crashes and stuff like that. I'm like, you don't get it, bro. Like, if prices go down, you know how much money I'm going to make? Like, I'm not saying prices are going to stay or go up because that's what I want to happen because I'm, that's going to make me more money. Yeah. No, I don't know how much money I'm going to make. I, I welcome the prices. If, if you go through a 2008, you're not scared of nothing when it comes to the real estate market, number one. Yeah. But like, how many buyers do you have right now that, that are waiting on prices to come down? Countless. It's, it's the same buyers that didn't get in because they didn't want to compete. And now they're waiting, now they're waiting because they're waiting for prices to go down. Exactly. Exactly. But think about how many people are sitting there waiting on prices to go down. Yeah. Okay. Now, now all these people saying crash is going to happen. They've been standing for two or three years. Yeah. Right. Everything keeps, keeps doing phenomenal, except for the amount of transactions and the monthly mortgage payments and stuff like that. But just think of how crazy it would be if prices come down, like how crazy your business would be. It would skyrocket. It would be insane, dude. It would be insane. It would skyrocket. You know, so like these people are talking or act like, you know, I'm trying to pump the market up and that's all I want. It's like, no, you don't even, you don't even get it. Like, this is when I see when I open up my phone every day. Woo. Woo. Woo. The woo gets longer and longer. Yeah, it does. The woo is longer. What's the longest woo you've ever done? I was going to do one where it was just that the whole time. Yeah, one real should just be the woo. Wait, can you do it right now? I went here. That's what I should do. Do you breath forth? Do you do like an inhalate? Like, you ever hold your breath and we need to, we need to film it. Like, film me doing it. We should all do it right now. We got three cameras on. Yeah. We got the lead us in a woo. Yeah. Lead us out on a woo. Yeah. We'll end the podcast on a woo. That was a bit. Let me see. Yeah. No, it's funny. I was in bed. It was like 9.30 at night. I'm scrolling. I'm like next to my girlfriend and like literally the entire like thing. It's just pitch quiet. No, yours. Woo. What are you watching? Stop watching porn. What are you watching? Oh my goodness. Let's see if there's any good articles out. I haven't done one in a minute. Is that Hello Kitty on your phone? Yeah. Actually, my daughter put this on at church like three weeks ago. It must be. They must have like some crazy glue. They put on that stuff. Anyway, yeah, I'm going to find a thing. I'm going to find a thing. I'm going to find a thing. I'm going to find a thing. I'm going to find a thing and all. So John, what do you tell a buyer agent that's on your team that's closing 50 transactions a year, 100% buyer base? What do you tell them if it does go in that right, if they collect their own commission? If it what? If they have to like actually collect their own commission. If it goes that route. If it goes that route. Yeah. Then we just have to up our value at the end of the day. And I would say the same thing like, you know, a lot of buyers agents at that time will probably drop out of the business. Oh, it's over. Exactly when we should kick it up a notch because right now, I tell you, my team doubled. Okay. In the past two months because the market's changing, transactions are being squeezed. So they all need help. Yes. So it's a huge opportunity. Anything changes, it's going to be a huge opportunity for people who are committed and are willing to work. So I think I would tell that buyer agent just say, hey, just keep your head down, keep moving and, you know, you're going to see people quiet quitting your opportunity to take market share. Yeah. And then I think you feel like you should be targeting sellers or targeting buyers. Because I tell everyone, they're all the same. They're all humans. You don't know when they're going to be buying or selling. What's your strategy there? Anybody that needs help will flow like you said, water. Real estate is not fixed. It's fluid. So sometimes we're working with buyers. Sometimes we're working with sellers. But the thing that the way I look at this, if the buyers got to cover the cost, I think that they all say to the buyer, listen, $25,000 in the house is a million bucks, we'll just negotiate the seller down in the amount that my fee is. Is that fair? Done. You know what I mean? It's an easy thing to overcome, but I'll help anybody that needs help. And I don't care if it's $200,000 or $2 million, everybody gets the same treatment. Are you asking from a perspective of lead prospecting? For buyers or sellers? Why are you asking this buyer or seller question? Because everyone's always like, so I have a ton of buy rates where like, I'm going to start focusing on sellers that are probably like doing the buyer leads, Zillow leads, or making YouTube videos that about their city, trying to attract people that are moving there. Those are buyer activities. Those are buyer focused, buyer heavy activities. Right? So for me, I'm like, all right, well everybody's going to make money at 6, 7 o'clock at night in real estate, everybody. It's your choice whether you're at home, chilling, relaxing, not a care in the world, while eight of your 21 listings are being shown by agents who make YouTube videos and do Zillow leads, right? Because they're buyer heavy focus, so they've got buyers running around all hours of the night while I'm property owner focus, not for listings per se, but those are the highest quality prospects. They buy and sell. They're the highest quality buyers and when they give me a listing, that's the highest real estate agent. So it's like everybody's choice. Like this girl the other day, they're like, she's like, should I send this letter to renters? I'm like, why? And she's like, well buyers, I'm like, but you could spend the same effort talking to a property owner that already owns the property versus a renter who may, may not ever buy. And if they do, you have to educate them on the first time home buyer education they're going to run you all around town all hours a day. You can do that, but is it the most efficient? No, focus on property owners. You know what I mean? Yeah, because I'm going to be at home at night, chilling with the family while you, superhero on YouTube is going to show all my listings. Yeah. What are your thoughts on people going big on YouTube? I mean, you know, if they do it for the purpose of trying to get listings and trying to attract property owners, right? So for example, if you take your YouTube and you make great videos that get great engagement, number one, around your listings to try to attract a buyer for your specific listing and B, to use the data and analytics on the back end to impress the seller on your next listing. How many hits I got? Yeah, like I'm getting 20,000 views a month on my YouTube and I'm hitting, you know, 5,000 profiles a month on Instagram and I'm going to be pushing your property on my platform. You know, any agent can put your property on MLS, but I have my own platform here of people that are circulating my content in the local market, right? That's, that's my value proposition that I have differently than the next agent that's going to walk through here. So for utilizing social media to do two things, try to drive buyers to your listings B, put out consistent content just for the sake of trying to get as many views and engagements as you can per month to impress the next seller at the next listing appointment, then I think it's great. But if you're using it just to try to attract buyers to you, I'm not a fan of that. Is that the future of real estate prospecting though? Do you think YouTube is not saturated yet? No. People are getting on it. You don't think it's the future of already here? I think people are utilizing it. It's not saturated. I think people are, well, I don't know that it will ever be saturated because people are scared to make videos. You know, it's the same thing with cold calling, right? Like, it's wide open because nobody's calling. Yeah. Right? I think engagement is underrated. Like, everyone's so focused on being content heavy which drives tons of inbound leads, but no one is sending out nobody. If you send out two new DMs to every single person on Facebook, how often are they going to go ahead and say, like, oh, I actually do need to buy or something like that? You know what I think is most underrated is impressions. Views. Yeah. Well, not saying even views. What's the difference between an impression and a view? We're still trying to figure that out. Well, like an impression is somebody just saw the content, right? Versus a view in 30 seconds or a view is like, is longer on YouTube for a long form on YouTube, but on Instagram, it's like whatever, like three seconds or something like that. So, like, whether if you're just scrolling through and I saw your video and I continue, that was an impression. I saw it, kept going. A view is, oh, I saw it. Oh, you got my attention on what I watched it for more than three seconds. That's a view. Got it. Right? And then like pictures of the video. And then Instagram pays attention to how long somebody sees your picture, but you don't see that analytics on your end. Yeah. But if they just scroll through and see it, if Instagram showed it to somebody in their fee, whether they stopped, liked it, whatever, that's an impression. If somebody saw it with their eyes. Those are, impressions are just eyeballs. So you're saying they're underrated because the more someone could subconsciously see your face, the more realistic you're building up in their mouth. Yes. This is what I mean. The email goes to the inbox. They see it in the inbox. Don't open it. That's an impression. Got it. Okay. So the fact that they saw it in their inbox meant something. They saw your name. They saw the subject. They saw that it hits every Wednesday. They never opened it, but they're like, damn, that Ricky's consistent. Yeah. Right. So like, I'm going to call that guy. I'm going to start opening his emails two years when I decided to do something. And I'm going to call him on that fifth week. I opened it with social media. You post your open house. And you're like, you know, or no, I'm sorry. That's actually a lot. You got, you know, 15 likes. You're like, man, this social media stuff don't work. Well, you look and you got like 500 impressions, which means it got 500 people saw you working. Right. They saw that you're at that open house. It's like, who's going to like an open house post? Right. But they saw it and it meant something. It's like Gary Vee was talking about the haters, right? People that hate everything. And he was like, you know, you know, people are hating and people are going to hate. And by the way, when you hit 100,000 on YouTube, the freaks come out. I mean, it's just like non stop, dude. But anyway, what he was saying, and that's why nobody posts content, honestly, because they'll see they'll see a celebrity and they'll see all the hate or they'll see like an influencer and they'll see all the hate messages that might even create content. Yeah. But what he said was, you know, well, number one, he's like, don't listen to the haters. He said, also don't listen to the people that are praising you either. Don't let that get too much to your head either way. But then he was like, it's the people that are sitting back watching your content quietly, not commenting, not even liking, but they love you and they love your content, but they don't say anything they don't like, that's good. Those are the people that you're really doing this for. You know what I mean? So, I was at the gym last week and a guy came up to me never, he's like, hey, just want to let you know I love what you're putting out. All your content's very positive. I appreciate you just keep it. I go, I said, I said, oh, thanks for trying. He goes, no, no, you're accomplishing your goal. Just want to let you know that's exactly what you're talking about. That is awesome. And it is. It's really cool. The only danger is, and I am really bad at it, is listening to the people saying how awesome you are. Because when you really listen to the people say how awesome you are, it makes you really listen to the people who are saying you're piece of shit. Right. You know, because if you're really listening to this, then you also take this to heart as well and it can mess with you. You know what I mean? So you got to get- Both ways now. You have to be. You have to try to do bad. It's the way you have to be because in this world, there's so many keyboard warriors, dude, that just type stuff for like, why? Why would you even spend your time to do that? It's crazy. You know what I mean? But there's so many people like this. But that's the same thing in real estate. People make a big sale. They think they're the shit. Then they lose a client. They get depressed. It's the same thing. For too long, don't beat yourself up for too long. Exactly. Stay neutral. Keep the emotions between the lines. That's exactly what you're saying to do with social, which I love.