 It doesn't matter what you do for a living. Standing out requires a high level of creativity, a healthy dose of ambition, and sheer grit. This is The Standouts, a show where we discuss, explore, and strategize what it takes to achieve the extraordinary. It's about finding your edge and learning how to leverage that for your own success. I'm your host, Aaron Gruscio. Get ready to be inspired to blaze your own path. My guest today is a top producing real estate agent, investor, coach, content creator with hundreds of thousands of followers across social media. Stoked to have him on the show, Ricky Karuth. Welcome to The Standouts. Oh man, good to be here. Thanks for having me. Of course, it's been a long time coming. I know we've tried to schedule this and make it happen. Glad it's finally here. If you wouldn't mind, can you start by sharing a little bit about yourself and your journey up until this point? Yeah, no, it has been a journey. So I grew up in Alabama here, roofing houses with my dad. Got in real estate when I was 20. It was 2002. There was no internet, basically no internet. There was no Facebook or apps or iPhones or any of that stuff. We barely had, honestly, MLS. It was like pretty new. So anyway, that was right before the market blew up. I made a lot of money flipping houses. Like I made a lot of money in commissions and flipped a lot of houses, made a lot of money and lost everything in the crash. I went back to roofing houses. I was working on an oil rig. I was broke, homeless, bankrupt, eating out of people's refrigerators, you know, servant aid. I was doing anything I could do to make some money. And then in 2008, I got laid off and I was like, let me try real estate again. So it took everything I learned from losing it all and applied it to this second chance in the business. And it worked out pretty well. So by 2014, I was selling 100 properties a year. I was the number one remix agent for a long time. And then I started, I got bored with real estate. I started writing books and speaking and traveling and coaching became the world's first completely free real estate coach. And the whole thing there was, let me do it for free, build a massive brand and audience and then have different layers of ways that agents can be partnered with me on the back end. So it's worked out really well. And the biggest thing I learned through the crash was that closings never stop and you really can't lose in the business. If you don't understand that, you can kind of get taken out by the market. But like in 2008, when I got back in, properties were literally 50% off. And it was the easiest sale, the easiest. It's like you think about the market now, there's a lot of talk about housing crashes and stuff. It's just ridiculous number one. But even if it were to happen, prices drop, even 20 or 30%, not to mention 40 or 50, just think how easy it would be to sell those properties. We've got more, like the pent up demand right now is more than we've ever seen. We've got more 33 year olds, how old are you? I'm 27. We've got more 33 year olds than we have seen since the baby boomer generation, which is the beginning age of first time home buyers, 98% of millennials want to become homeowners. They want to build their own equity. You've got demand from first time home buyers, unlike we've ever seen. You've got demand from existing homeowners who feel like they're locked into the rate but they really want to move. We're at really honestly all time lows, like as far as inventory goes. So a lot of this demands being suppressed by mortgage rates, which will just completely be unleashed as mortgage rates kind of eased down a little bit. And man, it's just, you know, so I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen. I have a good idea that we're going to see this massive wave of buyers that we have just never experienced before in a market that's lowest inventory we've ever seen. You know, that's kind of what I feel like's going to happen but we'll see. I'm excited either way because, you know, like a huge wave of buyers means, you know, that we'll have a lot of work to do to help these people find houses. I mean, let's face it, if there's no inventory, what's our job going to be? To go find inventory, you know, to go find some off market properties for these buyers. So we're going to have to get our hands dirty a little bit. I think the agents right now are kind of got spoiled over the last couple of years and they were able to just kind of really not have to do lead gen at all. Just leads kind of just flowed in and that's kind of dried up and that's why you're seeing a lot of agents leave the business. I think we just hit our first year over year negative decline in real estate agents that we've seen since the Great Recession and it's a big reason for it. But every time I go hop on the phone and go make a couple calls, I do deals, like I get business, you know? So I don't know, it's fun. Yeah, it is. I remain optimistic over these next few years, months. But you're totally right. I think the barrier to entry in regards to getting your license and becoming a real estate agent is very easy, very simple. And people don't realize, you know, the amount of work they need to put in to actually get clients. Yeah. People don't just come to you. You have to take active approaches and you're one of the first agents I started following before I even got my license. And I think what drew me to you, well, one, like you just said, you provided so much value and it was all for free, which was incredible and I know you still do that. But also you were really transparent about your business. I mean, you showed the world step by step exactly how you conduct your business, how you conduct yourself on sales calls. You constantly did those live cold calling sessions which blew my mind. I couldn't believe people actually did that still in this type of, you know, industry. I thought things had progressed a lot, but you have proved to everyone that those types of tactics are still extremely useful. But the transparency is amazing in your content. How important do you think transparency is to your success online and as a salesperson? Well, I mean, your story and your transparency and your unique, that's what separates yourself. You know what I mean? Everybody's wondering how to stand out on social and stand out as a real estate agent and stand out in this world, this noisy world. And it's just being who you are, right? It's like a fingerprint, right? No, nobody is the same. You know, you have different mannerisms and tone and speed of voice and thoughts and opinions and everything else. And we all kind of make up completely. We're not a society of robots, right? We might be soon, right? If AI keeps going, but we're so unique each person. So I think it's extremely important and it's literally why you see people, it's literally the difference in people crushing it, you know, on social media and in sales and not crushing it, you know? It's the difference in, you know, this person trying to be somebody they're not, or trying to follow a certain script or trying to copy a certain piece of content versus just speak your truth and do your own thing, you know, it's gonna go a lot further. You might not feel like it's gonna go further, right? Because this thing over here works so well for somebody else. But the fact is, is nothing's gonna happen fast. Yeah, totally. I mean, you preach hard work and consistency like no other and that's truly the key to anything, in my opinion at least. At what point throughout your career did you recognize how important building a personal brand is and, you know, highlighting your personal brand online and creating content? What sort of inspired all of that? Dude, honestly, I built like, I was so focused on my real estate business and trying to make a million bucks a year that I totally ignored. Like when 2008 happened, the start market crash, I had no idea the start market crash during that time. I was so focused on building my business. Same thing with social media. I didn't, I ignored it. You know, it just wasn't like, I was so focused on this that anything that wasn't this just didn't matter. And social media was one of those things. I was actually one of the first people in my space and it went away. Facebook took it out pretty quickly and I was like, okay, the social media things are just kinda gonna be here today, gone tomorrow. So I kind of assumed that Facebook will go through the same thing my space did, which didn't happen, right? You know, I didn't understand. I didn't get it. But later when I actually built a million dollar business, I kind of started to get bored with real estate. It was just easy at that point because I had such a big database, so much residual business coming in, past kinds of referrals. I was able to literally sell 100 properties a year, working like 10, 15 hours a week on that business. And I was just bored. I had reached the top of my market, number one agent in the county, you know, for so many years in a row. And it's not that I was burned out on it because I wasn't quite burned out at that time with sales. I did become burnout later, but I was just bored. So that's when I was like, okay, let me write a book and share how I did this so that hopefully I can help some more agents. And then that turned into a speaking engagement. And then that turned into me making a Facebook group. And then that turned into me starting to say, okay, let me learn how to work social media so that I can really build this massive presence and try to build this Ricky Careuth brand. So it wasn't until I completely climbed the entire mountain of real estate. That mean, it was not until then did I even take a second look at social media and decide, okay, let me go build a brand. But you know, with social media and the brand, you know, for me, I'm like, uh, you know, I love to see agents go out there and use social media to sell real estate. I think it's amazing and everything. And it should be done. But what I would like to see them progress into over the years is kind of what I'm doing, which is I looked at social media like it was a global opportunity versus just a local opportunity. And I'm like, if I'm gonna spend my precious social media hours here, I wanna spend it building the global brand, not the local brand. Cause I can get niche globally, which I did with real estate agents. So, you know, I stayed within my niche and I stayed super micro, you know, niche, but I did build a global brand within the niche as opposed to just building a, you know, I mean, I did build a global brand versus building a local brand. But even when you build a local brand these days, it bleeds into other markets, people in other areas see the content, they send you referrals. If I were an agent in like LA, New York, Miami, Dallas, you know, Atlanta, one of these markets where there's a lot, especially South Florida, anywhere in South Florida, that's where everybody's going. Like if I were in one of those markets with my brand as a real estate agent, dude, I'd be getting like five referrals a day, you know, but since I'm in Alabama, I'm getting like two a month, you know, from that, but that was never the goal was to create a brand and get referrals. That's just like a bonus, you know what I mean? But like creating content for agents to learn how to sell real estate, you know, could be a great platform to get tons of referrals if you're in one of these referral type, you know, markets where there's a big influx of, you know, people moving there, you know what I mean? But I think about I'm more in a global, a global opportunity than a local opportunity and how can I really squeeze this thing for all it's worth? Yeah, I think different types of content have different benefits because different types of content reach is different types of audiences. So I think more niche content may be better for generating local leads, but I think, you know, having a more global audience like you said, you can actually become slightly more niche and benefit from tons of referrals. Have you generated sales leads from creating content or has most of it been referrals from other agents? Just curious there. Oh yeah, no, I've never really gotten like clients to call me off or like the coaching content. Yeah. Yeah, it's just been agents, you know, follow me, send me referrals. Yeah, yeah. No, that makes complete sense. Yeah. Yeah, you can have various different models. If you were to create content with the goal of generating leads, what would that look like? You know, if I were to do that, which I don't know if I would, right? That's the whole thing too, is like I don't know that I would. Yeah, I mean, like I struggle going back and forth with it because I kind of created the brand first and it became very global, but something in my mind was like, maybe I'm not doing this right, maybe I should be creating content in order to generate leads more than just building my personal brand. But that, you know, building my brand has always been the primary goal, growing a larger audience, but maybe there is a way to start implementing content for lead generation. So that's just something I go back and forth in my mind, just curious what you think about that. Yeah. It just, here's the thing, like for me, what I learned early on and then like I look at the whole industry, like I can just, when I create content, what I'm trying to do is hopefully somebody sees me and I get into a conversation with someone, right? Right. For me, I can just get into conversations with people and I can bypass the entire thing. Now what I tell agents to do is to make calls all morning, even if it's social media leads that you got on social, like I don't care who you're calling, right? But make calls all morning and do social media and video and marketing and all that all afternoon and then do a weekly email, you're done. If your goal every day is to just create friends in the market, remarket to them with the weekly email and whatever social media they see, then you're gonna be a powerhouse agent, you know, it's not a matter of if, it's just a matter of when. So what am I making in the afternoon? I think the best strategy I've seen is to try to do one reel a day, right? If you're doing one a day, that's a lot, especially for an agent who's busy, who's out there showing properties and making calls prospecting and following up and stuff like that. But if you can sit down for two hours a week and take an hour to really script out a seven great videos, and then take another hour to film them, you know, we're talking about one minute videos here, right? You know, and like batch that out once a week and then send it to an editor or whatever you're gonna do there, you know, maybe you send it to an editor, maybe you just edited on Instagram with the captions and stuff. But, you know, like batch seven and actually sit down for an hour and really like map out what's a good, like what are my clients having problems with? Where's their pain points, right? Make some great hooks, bring some great value. And I think what's really winning right now, what I've seen that's winning better than not is telling people how to do stuff. Because we all hear like what to do, right? You know, we're all here and like, you should buy now because the market's this, okay? But nobody's saying you should buy now because the market's this and here's how you buy a house, right? You should invest, here's how. Or they're telling agents, you get listings, stack your listings, you know, okay, how? You know, okay, call expires, okay? Where do I get them? What's the step by step? What website do I go to? You know, what do I click on and then what do I say to them? Right, how do I convert? You know, just telling people step by step how to do stuff. So I think right now that's really, I think where we are in the whole maturity of the internet. You know, we've all been, you know, we've all had, it's been like what, 10 years of podcasts now? Or no, no, more than that. Podcasts have been around for like 15 years or something like that. Something like that, yeah. Yeah, so we've had 15 years of like YouTube and podcasts and Instagram and inspiration and you know, here's what you need to do. I think the phase we're in now is we've all heard what to do, right? Let's tell people how to do it. You know, we wanna know how to do stuff. Let's have the one, two, here's the action. Well, what you want in your content is for the viewer to walk away and say, damn, that was a great idea. I'm gonna go try that, I'm gonna do that today. I'm gonna try that today. That was genius. Yeah, that's providing true value right there. And I think that's the key. And when I think of you and your brand, it's always been value upfront. You've always been the person to provide that value upfront. And I think that is applicable to content, to your sales business. When you're actually providing something first, you then have the ability to sell, grown audience, actually build that community. So yeah, what would you advise in regards to an agent beginning their journey on social media? Do you think they should focus on short form? Should they consider doing long form? What would you tell a new agent looking to start making videos on social media? Well, again, I believe we've got to establish first that there's gotta be a balance between the time we're using to create content and time using to actually talk to people to help them buy and sell real estate. Totally. I think that's the conversation that needs to be had with the new agent because if we walk in and say, let's just make some content, let's do some long form, let's do some short form. And they wake up in the morning and they think, oh, well, here's my job making videos. That's not gonna cut it. Well, no, not actually. The videos are just really hopefully set to lead to possible conversations. So that needs to be established first, right? Is scheduling, are they part-time? Are they full-time? Do they, how many hours per week and what time block hours are those on what days? Are they dedicating 100% to real estate? Do they have a full-time job? Cause most new agents are part-time. And so when they get in, it's like, okay, your job, you work from nine to three, let's just say. And then you wanna do real estate from when you get home at 3.30 to 6.30 or something. So you got three hours a day right there, you're gonna commit. That gives me something to work with. A lot of agents, they don't even have that, they don't even have what, when they're gonna dedicate, they're just like in it, they don't know what they're doing, they don't know, they're just kinda doing whatever, whenever. And it's like, if you don't sit down and map out when you're gonna dedicate yourself to building your business, you're not gonna have a business. So I think that's step one, scheduling. Yeah. What's your week gonna look like and when are we actually gonna spend time dedicated to building your business? Then once I know that, then I wanna start mapping out what the most efficient things would be to do during that time. So anyway, in the very beginning, it's like there's a lot of post-license education, right? There's post-license courses in most states, there's contract education and training classes, there's MLS training, you probably have something with your brokers. There's all this training, right, in the beginning. So for me, I'm like, okay, half the time you spend, if you're part-time and you've got two to three hours a day, spend 50% of that time calling people you know to see how they're doing and tell them you're in real estate and see if there's something you can do to help them. If not, you just wanna stay in touch and get their email. The other half of the time is spent trying to crush through all that lump of post-license education stuff, right? And you just kinda crush that and keep it 50% talking to people, stirring the pot, 50% education until you knock the education out. Then we're gonna replace the 50% education with 50% marketing. And that's when we're gonna start maybe creating videos. I mean, you can, I mean, people can post, you can, it takes 60 seconds to just make like a raw, like video, but the best content, and you know this, is content that's actually scripted out and thought about and completely optimized as much as possible around the hook and the value and the call to action and everything else. So, you can make those off the cuff videos and your followers are gonna love that because it's, again, authenticity, but when you get to where you're really creating content, you really wanna script that stuff out. So, it's a progression, right? Yeah, totally. Well, it's a progression and the thing was is short term versus long form versus short form. And so, in the beginning, I would say just start doing short form because those are one minute videos and it's something you can kinda pump out. And then as you progress, you know, months and months and months into your journey and you've done some deals and you've got some things happening, you're starting to learn the business and you wanna start making some long form content. It's just really hard, man, for a new agent, right? Because you have all this stuff getting thrown at you and you get all these people trying to tell you what the best thing to do is and you know, you got coaches telling you to do this and brokers telling you to do that and friends telling you to do this and parents telling you to do that. And it's hard. So, you really have to keep it super simple, man, really baby step as a new agent, you know? Yeah, totally. I agree with everything you just said, that was all great. Yeah, I was gonna ask like four new agents in regards to creating content. When you don't have the experience, when you maybe don't know what is what, should you even be creating content or how do you come up with content ideation? When, yeah, you don't have the knowledge and the experience. I think that some people come in to the business and they just start crushing content. Like I know new agents that come in and do content and it's like, I would say it's like, you know, one in a thousand. Yeah. But they come in and they do some, they do content and they just kind of wing it and they're just super confident and they sell some properties. Yeah. So everybody's different, right? I think a lot of this business is finding out who you are. Mm-hmm. I don't know who you are, what you're good at. Some people are not going to do video, period, end of story. Right. Some people are not gonna make cold calls, period, end of story. You know, so, but like, there's people that do video that crush it. There's people that do cold calls that crush it. Everything works. People that do Zillow leads crush it. Mm-hmm. And there's people that do cold calls that fail. There's people that do video that fail. There's people that do Zillow leads that fail. So everything works and everything doesn't work. You know, it's really important to find what works the best for you and then go all in on that. You know, maybe it's written word on social. Maybe it's not you on camera. Maybe it's written word writing blogs on Facebook or LinkedIn or, you know, doing great pictures on Instagram. Maybe, you know, maybe really incredible photography. You know, I know Jordan Cohen over there. He, most everything he does is just pictures of the houses, you know, and he crushes it. He's number one remax agent in the world, you know, and he just does pictures on Instagram. You know, 99% has stuff is just pictures. He started to do a little bit of video, but it's more of like just the property. It's not him talking. Right. It's just like drones of the houses and stuff like that, you know? So like, there's so many ways to skin the cat here. It's not just about you on camera. It could be, right? But there again, it may not be, you know? Yeah. No, I think you're totally right. There are so many different routes to the top. Not everything's going to work for everyone. And yeah, you just got to put in the time to try different things out, find what works, what doesn't and stay consistent, of course, with the things that do work. Switching gears, just some curious on your thoughts. What do you think is the future for real estate agents? Or is the, you know, average real estate agent going to become obsolete with technology and, you know, advancement? Or do you think we're going to have to adapt to provide even more value to compete with technology? What are your thoughts? Nobody knows, really. What do I think? I think that it's going to be hard to replace us. Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot to it, you know? But, you know, part of it is, okay, you know, AI, AI is answering questions based on everything that it's learned, right? So it can learn everything about me and it can make a pretty educated guess on what I would say to something, right? But the future's not here yet. And I may not answer that same question the same way next time it's asked, right? So it doesn't know the future. See, AI is just taking history and compiling it and saying, well, here's the best educated guess based on everything that I know and it's a really smart machine, of course. So that educated guess is really, really good. But there again, it's not, it doesn't know the future, right? Or if like, I'm going to change my opinion on something, once I change my opinion on it, then maybe they could take receipt of that and then start answering questions differently, you know, the way I would answer questions or whatever, right? It's the same thing with the market. It's like, the market, like how to house a cell for more than, you know, how do prices go up? It's because, you know, this house sold for more than the last one, right? If you're going purely on comps, you know, that's why his estimates I think was a big failure, honestly, you know, cause it was more, you know, tech driven to try to come up with prices and it's going to be interesting to see how it all plays out, you know? Because like, how is AI going to know? People could go in and I guess, create this checklist of, okay, my walls need paint, you know, I've got a chip over here, you know, it's a whatever age roof, but that computer generated price, you know what I mean? There's so much more to it, you know, as far as pricing a property, you know? Now the consumer could say, okay, that price looks good, let me go with that, but then what? Right, what about the rest of the process and negotiating and making sure that somebody has your back? See, that's the part right there. How do you know somebody has your back and you're getting the very best deal, you know, the terms are, you know, negotiated fairly. How do you know that if you're dealing with technology? You know what I mean? Or one of these big corporations that does, you know, hundreds of deals a month, how do you know? So that's why I don't think we're going to be replaced because I think there's always going to be that need of humans to feel like they have somebody in their corner that has their back that's negotiating on their behalf with their best interest. And I just don't think that they're gonna be able to get that. I think that it's gonna be a whole different world in five years and in 10 years and in 20 years, of course. But I think that it'll be a world that is incredibly lucrative for us, for real estate agents because it's like this, you know, when Zillow came along, everybody was worried about Zillow taking over agents, right? Well, Zillow has done nothing but make my life a million times easier. You know, I used to have to talk to a buyer, figure out their criteria, look up physically through all the hundred listings and pick out the five or 10 I thought best suited them which took hours, send it to them, let them send me the ones they wanna see, then I would set them up and boom, right? And that was hours, that process. Now, dude, I haven't looked up a property for anybody in, you know, a decade. Yeah, setting them to us. They call me and they say, here's the ones I wanna see, right? And I give them to my assistant, she sets up the showings and then I'm like, as you're setting those up, if you see anything else that might fit, you know, anything that's new, came on the market or whatever that might fit that, throw it in there. But, you know, Zilla made my life way more easier and helped me make way more money and way less time. You know, so that was one of those things. People were worried that Zilla was gonna replace real estate agents, but it did nothing but help real estate agents, right? And I think that's the same thing that's gonna happen with all this AI and chat GPT and all that is that it's just gonna make our lives easier. It's gonna give us more tools to be more efficient, to be able to help people, you know, and a more, you know, efficient. It's gonna make us more efficient, which is gonna help us sell more properties in less time, which I find very exciting. Definitely, likewise. So what's next for Ricky Caruth? What's keeping you motivated right now? I just had another podcast and the guy asked me the same thing and I'm like, I have no idea. Because like, I mean, I know what's next, but the thing is, is like, the only thing driving me right this second is just the fact that I can't quit moving. Like I can't sit still. Like I have my dream house, dream family, dream cars, you know, dream investments, passive income. I'm done. Like I've hit all my goals. I've succeeded at the highest levels that I care about. And so now it's just, I just do what, literally it's just what I wanna do. Like I wanna do this podcast and, you know, I wanna, you know, I scripted some videos that I'm gonna batch tomorrow. And like I'm just doing what I wanna do now at this point, you know? It's not about the money. You know, I could, dude, I could go out and double my real estate portfolio in the next six months, easy. I've got so much equity built up, I could tap into and just go buy all kinds of stuff. Am I buying things? Yeah, I've got four houses I'm buying right now, but I could buy a lot more. But the money thing just doesn't, you know, like I'm just doing it for fun. I'm not doing it to max it out. You know what I mean? So I think traveling and speaking, I'm having fun doing that. And hearing from all the agents, all the Ricky stories and, you know, all that stuff is awesome. But I'm just having fun, man. And I think I'm just gonna keep doing this for a minute and just kind of see where it goes. I will tell you the whole purpose of the Ricky Crews brand was to do free coaching and then build an audience and then have ancillary platforms where people could do business with me, right? So I've got mortgage. People can partner with me on mortgage. People can partner with me on investments. You know, if they have deals that they wanna buy, I'll throw in with them if we like it. Or, you know, if they wanna throw in on deals that we're buying, we can invest together. Coaching, I've got the coaching platform for people to go and, you know, increase their volume, just like you and many other agents have done. I've got the brokerage. People can join me at my brokerage and sales. You know, we could throw referrals back and forth or whatever. So I've got mortgage, brokerage, investment, coaching and sales. I've got these five avenues, whereas it's like I can go to any agent in the country and say, hey, you thinking about, you know, doing something different brokerage-wise? You wanna talk about that? No, I'm good where I am. Cool. Do you wanna partner on the mortgage? No, I'm good there. I have a great mortgage lender and I don't wanna make any money on mortgage. It's cool. Do you wanna invest? You got some money you wanna invest, you know, when we can look at some nice returns and look at some deals together, you know, or whatever. So it's like, if you don't wanna do this with me, I've got these other things that we could do together. And if you don't like anything, that's cool too. Hopefully you get some kind of value out of my content or whatever, and I can inspire you in some kind of way and help you in some form or fashion. But that was the whole plan from day one. You know, create an audience, coach for free, and then build out businesses that agents could partner with me on. That's awesome. All extremely inspiring. You are the ultimate entrepreneur and a true standout. On that note, who's your standout? Someone that you admire, someone you've looked up to throughout your career could be in real estate, maybe not. Yeah. Let's see, who is it right now? I don't know who it is right this second. I've had a couple people that I kind of looked up to temporarily. Grant Cardone, Gary Vee, and those guys really, they really did it for me, man, too. Like those guys were the Ricky Crooths for me. Like Grant molded my whole vision around thinking bigger and what was possible and just made things seem, made things seem attainable, you know, made really big goals seem attainable. Gary, Gary, I started absorbing his stuff and that was right when I started coaching. And so that kind of, his stuff really was a big part of the inspiration towards doing the free coaching, you know, and going that route with, you know, my brand and how I wanted to really build this thing out because you can go build an education company and sell courses and coaching products and stuff like that, you know, or you can build the brand out and build ancillary companies like I am, whereas the information is free and we're not gatekeeping the info. And you talked about being transparent and stuff from the beginning. And that was one of the reasons I went free too. Cause like, if I'm charging you for certain information, I can't really go and talk about that publicly. Cause now you're gonna say, what the hell am I paying for? I mean, I know you're paying for my time and it get close to me and stuff like that. But then the information behind the paywall, I didn't like that, you know what I mean? I wanted to be able to go and just talk about anything I wanted to and answer questions how I wanted to answer them. And I felt like there was a brief six month period where I was charging for coaching, it just didn't feel right. I felt like I was handcuffed and I felt like, I don't know, it was weird. So I was like, I gotta get out of this, you know? I don't know, man, people I look up to, I just got my head down and just so focused, you know, I just wanna build these companies and help a lot of people and, yeah, I don't know, I guess I'm looking for another, you know, I was kinda, I kinda was looking at Patrick Bet-David, I went down and interviewed him and got to hang out with him and stuff for a while, a couple of weeks ago, I like him a lot, but he's kind of in a different genre, you know? So I don't know, I'm open. I don't have anybody right now. I love it. You're a standout to me and a lot of people in my audience, your story is incredibly inspiring and again, someone I certainly look up to and hope to follow in your path. Ricky, thanks so much for being here. If people wanna follow along and watch your content, where can they find you online? Yeah, just Ricky Karuth everywhere. If you type in Ricky C on Instagram, I'll be the first Ricky there and YouTube and everywhere else. So if you're looking for free coaching, that's at zero to diamond, zero to diamond.com and yeah, now reach out, feel free to DM me on Instagram and let me know what I could do to help you. You do answer your DMs, which is awesome. Yeah. A lot of people say that and they don't follow through. You're awesome, Ricky. Thanks so much for being here. I appreciate you. Thank you, bro.