 I call a property owner, you're a real estate agent. I don't want to sell my house, good. That's not why I'm calling today, sir. I'm calling as a member of the community here to let you know a house did sell around the corner from you and just calling to see how you're doing today, man, see if there's something I could do to help you. Hi, I would just like to kind of piggyback out of the last lady's question. Because I think that for us newer agents, we're kind of more confused on what we should be doing on a daily basis outside of, I've done the phone calls, I've done the messaging people on Facebook and Instagram and it's not necessarily as effective as I would have thought that it would have been. And it's not like I did it just for a little while and I stopped and I didn't give it enough time. I literally didn't get any results from that. And so it was discouraging. So how do you move past that discouragement of reaching out to everybody that you know and still not really getting any leads and then not knowing what to be doing on a daily basis to feel like you're being productive in the real estate world. Did you call people you don't know? I did a little of what they're calling, driving for dollars, got a few addresses and called those people but never got anyone extra really interested in selling their property. So here's the thing and this is incredibly common, totally normal. This is very, very, you know, just classic, general, pretty much happens to every single agent, right? You have a perception in your mind of how hard this business is going to be. When you get into the business, you're on this high and you know, this is your own boss. You make your own money, set your own schedule, you know, this is going to be great and you're on this high and then you have people tell you this is going to be hard and you're like, oh yeah, I know it's going to be hard. I'm ready for hard and you have this conception, this perception in your mind of how hard this is going to be. But what you don't realize is that the reality behind it is that you need to multiply whatever you thought, how hard you thought the business was going to be and multiply that times about 20 and that's actually how hard it's going to be. And when we get in, we have this expectation that, oh, well, if we call everybody we know and we do a few dollars driving for dollars, then we're going to get a deal. But that's not how it works. And just about every agent on this call that is experienced will tell you that chances are, if you get a deal, you're lucky if you got a deal out of any of that. Cause that's just not the reality for anybody. Sometimes people get lucky and they get a deal really quick and that could be dangerous because now they have a misconception of how the business really operates and they kind of feel like it's a little easier than it really is. And I've seen a lot of agents come in and do a quick deal and end up quitting the business within 10 to 12 months because they just kind of didn't really work that hard from that point. Cause they thought things were just going to fall in their lap like that first deal did. It's actually a good thing that you did all this and didn't really get a deal because now you're getting a dose of the reality of the business. The thing is, is that it takes a long time for your business to mature. As a new agent, we haven't planted any seeds. You haven't, you know, developed any relationships. You know, when you go on a listing appointment and you're up against two other agents and you lose the listing to another one of the two agents, you think, oh, that agent is more, you know, it's more popular, he's more experienced, you know, he's a great closer, but that's not the case. That the fact is, is that that agent probably cold called or met them on social media or Zillow or something three years ago and they've been staying in touch via weekly email, social media texts, phone call, direct mail, whatever. They've been staying in touch very consistently and proved to that seller over the course of time that they are consistent, that they are a full-time agent, that they are here, you know, they're not going anywhere and that they're professional and knowledgeable. They've developed this relationship and then you go to the listing appointment and you think it's because that person was a great closer. No, you just met the seller. This other agent has planted the seed with them for three years and that relationship has matured and they still wanted to get a couple other opinions but then of the day they picked the person that they felt the most comfortable with that has been there the whole time. So you gotta understand as a new agent, you haven't planted any seeds years ago, you just got in the business and then all these people that you're talking to, there's a lot of these people that aren't gonna do business with you until two to three to four to five years down the road. And so you've got to put systems in place that everyone you talk to never forgets who you are. I do it through a weekly email to my entire database on the same day of the week to show dependability, consistency, hard work, determination, professionalism, all the things that they want in the agent, it shows them that, that's my system where I don't have to worry about home adversaries and, you know, all that stuff. They know who I am. They're gonna remember me forever. They're gonna, there's a good chance they're gonna call me when they decide to do something. Nevertheless, what I'm getting at here, there's so many things to unpack with, with your situation. It's way harder than you thought it was gonna be. I'm sure you realize that now. Now's the moment where you say, oh, okay, you know what? It is harder than I thought it was gonna be but Ricky can do it and all these other agents are doing it. So if they can do it, I know I can do it, right? You're not going through anything that none of us on here that has succeeded has went through. So the question is, is can you stomach how hard the business actually is to get going and can you get through that hard part of the business what's last a couple of years to really get your feet under you to get some real momentum in the business to where your closing deals on a consistent basis. Can you handle that pressure? And that's why a lot of agents quit because they can't handle that pressure because it is extremely hard. So first realize that make a decision that, okay, it's hard but you know what? I'm up for the challenge. I'm in this for the next 30 years. I don't care if it takes two to three to four to five years to get going. I'm going to do this. Then it's like, okay, you've made that decision. Now you're good. Now let's settle into what we need to do day to day which you said you're having trouble with. That's not hard either. But the thing is is I don't know your situation, right? I don't know if you're working a full-time job doing real estate on the side. As a new agent, a lot of new agents are part-time in the beginning. They're working around a schedule. Maybe they have a family with kids where everybody has different schedules and stuff. So what you have to do as a new agent is you have to delegate. You have to basically look at your week and say, okay, I'm going to 100% dedicate these hours on these days to building my real estate business. So not going to ask you because you know, that may turn into a long conversation but a lot of agents I talked to that are new that have part-time, they're doing a part-time of stuff, they haven't really mapped out, okay, I'm going to work from three to five on Wednesday and two to five on Friday. I'm going to dedicate those hours 100% to building my real estate business. I'm going to get after it during those hours. Most agents are just kind of like whatever, whenever. Well, if you're not dedicating time to your business to build it, you're not going to have a business. So that's the first thing, we got to dedicate that. If you're full-time, if you actually are working at hours a day on your real estate business for whatever reason, then it comes down to a couple of things. I can make a really easy, just simple daily routine for you, okay? If you're working, you know, eight hours a day, okay? As soon as you sit down at your computer, right? It's eight o'clock, okay? For the first 15 minutes, you're going to map out your day. Go through your emails, your text messages, brainstorm. Think of everything you need to think of for the day. Put it all on sheet of paper with your schedule, your to-do list, hot listings you're going after, calls you need to make. Everything's on one sheet of paper that way. You don't have to worry about nothing the rest of the day. You don't even got to think. You know, exactly what you got to do when you got to do it and what the goals are for the day. Boom, that's done, 15 minutes. Eight 15, study MLS hot sheet for 15 minutes. Eight 30, who are we calling today? And why, what's the purpose, what's the script, where's the numbers, all that stuff? Cause by nine o'clock I'm dialing. From nine to 12, I'm making calls. I don't care who you're calling. Sphere for sell by owner, circle prospecting, aspires, internet leads, Zillow leads, Facebook leads, Instagram leads, open house leads. Now where I don't care who you're calling, but you better be calling somebody or you're not going to be closing deals. Nine to 12, we're on the phone. After 12, we're going to do all of our marketing, handwritten letters, making our videos, doing our weekly email, direct mail, SEO, blogs, whatever you do. Now, this makes things really super simple. If your goal during the calls is to make five new friends a day. If you look at, and this is a real study, nor did a study, okay, the number one reason why people choose real estate agents because they had a friend in the business with a great reputation. And it was like 32%. All the other reasons were less than one. What brokers they're with online, all that stuff. The number one reason, just all the rest of them were non-existent. This one reason was the reason. Friend in the business with the great reputation. What does that tell you? Your job is to make friends in the market, period. So if you can make five new friends a day with property owners on the market, you spend that nine to 12, that's the whole goal, right? Over the course of five years, 250 working days a year, you can have 6,000 friends in the market. If you got 6,000 friends who own property in the market, that's gonna weekly email from you on the same day of the week forever, how big do you think your business is, right? You're the number one agent in your market and everybody's gonna ask you how you did it. You're gonna say, oh, I just followed this dude named Rookie in Alabama and he said, look at MLS every day, put my schedule together, make five new friends a day and do social media after lunch. And guess what? Now I'm a multimillionaire and I'm the number one agent in my market. This stuff is not hard, guys. Really super simple. But I wanna go back to the person to ask the question and make sure that I cleared everything up for you and see if you have any follow-up questions. Yes, that was a beautiful response, but I do have a few follow-up questions. One, what type of content are you putting in your emails? And two, where are you getting phone numbers from of people that you don't know? Go to redxredxdiscount, so you can get the discount. Okay, redxdiscount.com, get geoledsplus and expiresplus. Geoledsplus, you can pick out 7,500 property owners of your choice. Pick out the subdivisions. You get their phone numbers and email addresses. With expiresplus, go back 10 years worth of expires, cancels and withdrawns, and have all that expired data for years. And call them and say, hey, I saw you were trying to sell this house a couple of years ago. Whatever happened with that? Boom, they open up and have a conversation with you. Brings you to present day, what they're looking to do now, how you can help them. Really super simple stuff. So that's where you find phone numbers and then the email, So I've been doing my weekly email since 2007. And in 2017, I was literally able to just quit prospecting altogether. That was the first year I made a million bucks. Met a million dollars every year since with zero prospecting, zero social media, zero anything, just doing the weekly email. You guys can go to startmyweeklyemail.com and see all the weekly emails that I've done since November. I have them posted there. And there's a link where you can get my template. You can just use the same template and just do the same thing. Just go there and look at all the emails I did, use my template and just copy what I do. Can I ask you a question real quick? When you are using the X-Fers and the phone numbers that you're getting from these sites, how do you deal with the call list? The what? No call list, even no call list. The what? The what? The do not call list. The what? You're gonna get a lot of people in trouble, Mr. Ruthie. I didn't say anything. I didn't hear the question, I didn't say a word. Listen, here's the bottom line of the whole thing. I'm not calling to sell somebody's house. I'm calling as thinking of yourself as a volunteer worker doing community outreach to people in your area to see what it is you can do to help them. I call a property owner, you're a real estate agent. I don't wanna sell my house, good. That's not why I'm calling today, sir. I'm calling as a member of the community here to let you know a house did sell around the corner from you and just calling to see how you're doing today, man, see if there's something I could do to help you. I'm not trying to do a deal with you today. I'm trying to see if there's something I can do. I don't care about what I can't do for you. Let's talk about what you do need, right? So I'm not calling to solicit. I'm not calling to sell. I'm not trying to call on a list. I'm not asking them if they thought about selling. I'm not calling to present a rental property to them. I'm not trying to sell anything. I'm calling as a friend, right? A member of the same community they live in to see how they're doing, see if I can connect with them, see if there's something I could do to help them. Yeah, it's more of a survey kind of call, which, by the way, is totally legal even for do not call, to do a survey. Who was trying to ask a question at the same time, Kim, was I think someone else had a question? I have a question. This is Fonda, headmaker out of Manchester, Tennessee. No, Ricky, how are you? Doing good. How you doing Fonda? I love that name, F-H-O-N-D-A. Yeah, that's his name, Shonda and Rhonda. So I'm the Fonda. Beautiful. So, Ricky, what we're seeing is like sellers have expectations of it flying off the market still and we're not there yet. So how do you communicate with them just to keep them, you know, in your rah-rah or your cheerleading and just let them know? I do set expectations of, hey, it's a different market now. We're looking at 30, 60, 90 days, depending on their price range. So how do you deal with that right now? As far as if they're already listed with me, how to keep them engaged and happy with how things are going or to get the listing pre-listing? No, you've already got the listing, but just want them to still be your rah-rah even though their house has been listed for 35 days. Well, the market gives us data, even though showings is data, right? And so all we can do is give them the data. We're not, you know, we're not the, we're not Fonda, HapMaker, the Rainmaker here. We, you know, we, all we do is educate and try to help. Okay, so, you know, I contact, if I'm not talking to my seller every day or week because we're showing the property and I have to talk to them on a regular basis anyway, if it's one of those sellers I never really talked to for whatever reasons, I'm at least gonna talk to them every other week, and give them an update on what's happening with their property, you know, on the market, with the feedback from any buyers that have looked at it, how many showings we've had, and also anything that's changed in that subdivision or condo complex since we listed it, or since last time we talked to them, you know? So like, if there was another one listed, it went under contract, hey, this one went pending. Remember that house we talked about that was on the market we were kind of competing with? It went pending, you know, and you can kind of compare that house to this house, and, you know, have those conversations with them, but it's kind of like you're, you both are detectives. It's, you know, like when a house isn't selling, it's kind of like you're both detectives. You are kind of a detective partner with a seller, trying to figure this thing out. You know, why hasn't it sold? What do we need to do to get it sold? You know, let's look at these properties and how this happened in days on the market over here and price per square foot, and this one had a upstairs and this one was a better view and, you know, all those things. So I think it's a matter, I think the rah-rah comes from the fact that you're not shying away from the fact that it hasn't sold yet, that you're kind of hitting the head on, you're happy to call them and talk to them about it and see if they want to make any changes. If they're good with it, if it hasn't been shown at all and they're good with how things are going, they're happy with the price, they're happy with you, they're happy with no showings, great. Let's keep going like it is. They're not happy with that. It's like, okay, well, we need to make an adjustment because it's not being shown at this price, you know, when you got properties in the same neighborhood that are selling, their price is a little lower. You know, it's a very price sensitive market right now. You know, if you're off by $10,000, literally $10,000, that could be the difference in it sitting on the market and not selling and selling in literally a day. I've seen it over and over again. So, I don't know, every seller is different, you know? So I think I'm filling them out, seeing how they feel and just trying to guide them best you can and help them do what they want to do, being really honest with them too. Thank you. And it was like a miracle. I had this listing, it went expired. We've relisted same price. We never dropped the price. A month and a half into the new listing just yesterday, I got five offers on that property there. And I was like, what just happened? And I think it's because we weren't reducing, reducing. We had it priced right. It was a specialty property. And it was showing, you know, periodically. And then we had like eight showings and got five offers on it. So I think that if it's priced right, you kind of stick to your guns and don't reduce. Art, do you think that really? Yeah, I think it depends on the seller. I don't want to tell the seller not to reduce if they want to reduce because, you know, if I tell them to do something against what they want to do and then it doesn't work out, then they're going to say, hey, you know, they're going to kind of blame it on me. I want to help them do whatever it is they, I want to go whatever direction they want to go with it. But on the flip side, for me, I have to look at your specific market, but prices are going up, not down. So if something's a little overpriced today, it's probably going to be the right price tomorrow. So having a little patience, I think we'll go a long way with some of this. Right, thank you so much. I got time for one more, ladies and gentlemen. Rebecca, did you have your hand up? I did. What's your question? Well, it was more of a comment in regards to how you started this meeting that you were an investor and that you buy and hold, et cetera. So I would love to start fostering a relationship, see if there's anything that we can possibly do to get together and do commercial and residential here in Tennessee. If you have multifamily, you know, apartment complexes and stuff, feel free to send me any of those deals. I'll evaluate them and decide if it's something we want to go after. Ricky, what was that email? I'm sorry, what was the website address that you gave out for your weekly emails? Some people didn't catch that. It's called startmyweeklyemail.com. Gotcha, okay, putting that in the chat. Okay, Ricky, thank you so much for your time this morning. It's been a pleasure, as always, to have you in it. We're so grateful. Hey, the pleasure is all mine, guys. Thank you so much. And I hope you got something out of it and you can take back to your business and really crush it. Let me know if there's anything I can ever do to help any of you. Just reach out on Workplace is a good place to try to catch me or Instagram, of course. So, no, I appreciate, I'm honored that you guys would have me. Five with the top down. Quit the telehater, they should get it.