 Give one piece of advice to your 20 year old self, kind of knowing what you know now. And obviously it seems like what you're doing now is really helping those people who are looking for that kind of advice. What would be that single piece of advice you'd give your 23 year old self? To build a database and to build an audience of people in my market and to continue to build my brand with those people. That's something I wasn't doing from the beginning because the reason why I lost when the market crash is because I was so transactional, right? I would just do a deal with the client and never hear from them again. And I was doing nothing to stay in touch with them. So that's the sales game, okay? When you're in the sales game, you have to wake up every day or after every sale and you have to go do it again. You have to sell again and sell again and sell again. But when you're in the personal branding game, you're in the business of attracting people to you and you're in the accumulation business whereas you're accumulating these clients over time, right? And it becomes, it turns into a snowball, right? Whereas in the very beginning of your career, you're working to get a new deal, you want a new deal, you want a new deal, you're working to get a new deal. You're running into a lot of people that aren't ready, you're accumulating those people for later, you're continuing on your mission to find a new deal, then boom, you find a new deal, right? Then you find another new deal. Then somebody calls you that you talked to two months ago that wants to do a deal. So now you're having the double whammy effect where you're finding new business, but then you're starting to see so a little bit of results from the seeds you planted two, three, four, five months ago because those people are starting to call you back, right? And then you keep going a little bit more and then you start to see repeat business where people that did a deal with you are coming back to do a second deal. Then you start seeing referrals on top of all that. Then you start seeing referrals over referrals and it just, it snowballs into a very massive situation over a three to five year period of time. So I didn't realize any of this, you know? And this is why, this is one of the biggest reasons why I failed and lost everything during that time because I wasn't accumulating clients and I wasn't trying to build a personal brand. You know, when the market crashes, what happens is prices go down. Transactions may go down a little, but the market is still incredibly massive. The industry is a whole. We could lose 80% of the market and only have 20% of what's there now and that market, 20% of what we have now is still so massive we can't even comprehend how massive that is. There's still so much business within that 20%. So what I realized was that closings happen every day regardless of what the market does. Closings never stop. You go back through history, you look at dot com boom, 9-11, 2008, the pandemic. Closings never stop through any of those scary moments. So us as real estate agents, right? We got it made because closings never stop. We make a commission on the sale. Doesn't matter what the price is, prices can adjust. That's fine, that doesn't, you know what I mean? We make a little less commission on a deal if it's less money, but closing still continue to happen and it's all about helping people do what they want to do, right? When the market goes down, investors come out, we want to help the investors buy the deals. When it goes back up, the investors want to sell, want to help them sell, want to help first time home buyers. I was really good at that market, but I wasn't versatile enough to really shift and adjust when the market shifted. So yeah, it would be that, you know, to develop that database and build your personal brand and help those people on the way up and the way down. What would you say in relationships with your audience or your customer base? You know, when you're talking to each and every prospect, it's about when they're looking to do something, why they're looking to do it. And based on, you know, why, when, and what, you know, really get into the deeper reasons of why they're wanting to do a transaction. You know, a lot of agents, they just sell, you want to sell that, okay, this is what it's worth. Let's do this deal. But I want to know what's causing them to sell. Did their mom die, kids went to college, lost a job, got a job, relocate and upgrading, downgrading, investment, what's going on? Right, I want to know what's going on in their life that's causing them to make this decision. When I know that, then I can truly help them. When you start asking questions like that and you start relating to them as a person and what they have going on in their life, you're really going a little deeper than just your everyday ordinary agent and you start to stand out a little bit. So then they're like, wow, this person really cares. Then you follow that up with answering your phone every time, doing exactly what you said you were gonna do, when you said you were gonna do it. Every little twist and turn of the deal, you're right there to help it go smooth and everything just, they have a great experience with you. That's what you want to do. You want to sacrifice your body in a figurative manner to help them have the smooth, that you want them to feel nothing but butter. You just want it to be smooth as ice for them. Every transaction, so past that, as far as building the personal brand, you know, I think email should be the foundation of it. It's a 90% organic reach, right? And then sprinkle the social media stuff on top of the email marketing. What should I be building in myself to allow me to have that confidence with any sort of field that I am looking at going into? I think confidence really at the core comes from your intentions. So there's always that little bit of fear that you have to conquer, like, as far as the like talking to strangers kind of thing and what are they gonna think about me and rejection and all that stuff, which, by the way, rejection is just them telling you what they want to do. It's not rejection. Rejection is like they're taking a stab at your character, even know you, right? Even if they've met you for a day or two, how can they even judge who you are? People, people, you throw that word around way too loosely. It's not rejection. And I hate that that word has even started to circulate around, you know, what prospects are doing. That's not, even if they cuss you out and hang up on you, that that's just their way, that's just their language. You know, let me translate. They're saying, hey, thank you so much for calling me. I really appreciate it. Look, here's the thing. I'm just not interested right now and I gotta go. But again, thank you so much. And look, call me later. Call me some other time, right? That's really what they're saying when they cuss you out like a dog and hang up on you. So you just have to understand people's language and what they're really saying behind, it's like when people say, hey, we're probably, you know, we're gonna sell in six months, you know, call me then kind of thing. And then you're like, oh, I got a deal. And then you call them back six months later and they don't answer. And you're like, oh, what happened there? I thought I had a deal. You know, and then they just totally ghost you and maybe even call back like two or three months later just to check in and they just totally ghost you. You're not listening to them. The thing is, is they told you six months and to call me later just to get you off the phone. They didn't wanna be mean to you and say, listen, I don't really trust you. I don't really like the way you're talking. Your tone's off. You're just giving me a lot of red flags. You know, they're not telling you that what were they really think. They're just gonna tell you whatever they have to tell you to get off the phone. You have to be able to kind of read between the lines and see the big picture of what's going on here. But in terms of like confidence, referring back to your question, I really think the core of it is what's our intentions and that we can stand behind our intentions that we're actually there to help people. We're actually there to help people. So when I talk to someone I never talked to before, even if it's like a multimillion dollar developer and I should be just shaking in my boots over this and scared to death, I'm not gonna be because I know that, okay, they might ask me some questions I don't know or this or that or maybe I might even look dumb. I don't care. That's what you have to get into the mindset of is that you don't care because you know at the end of the day, your intentions are just to try to help them, right? If they're there to just try to make you look dumb, that's not my client anyway. I don't need somebody sitting there trying to make me look dumb. You know, you don't wanna work with me because I don't know this off the top of my head even though I'm gonna out work anybody that walks in the door and I'm gonna work the hardest for you. I'm gonna make sure it goes smooth for you. I'm gonna figure this thing out and I'm gonna make this happen. You just gotta have to have confidence that you will work the hardest and that your intentions are to help people and then never care what people think because you know who you are. Doesn't matter who they think you are, you know who you are. It's like when you call someone and they try to, like, you know, people call calling property owners and the property owner kinda acting like, oh yeah, you know, like that you're a scam artist or you're trying to, you know, just get them to sell your house and all this stuff. And I say, wait a minute, ma'am, sir. I feel like, wait, hold on. You know, that's, I'm not trying to sell your house. Actually, I'm just trying to give you some information about your neighborhood here. A house just sold around the corner from you and to call to see if there's anything I can do to help you today. No strings attached here. But let me tell you, I'll tell you what. Let me go ahead and move on and hang up on you real quick because I don't have time for this kind of thing. You know, that's the kind of attitude you gotta have, you know, that like you have to take offense almost because of how strongly you feel that you're there to help people.