 What's up everybody? Yes, what is happening? Good day, good day, hello. Good morning, good evening, good night. Wherever you are in the world, good to see everybody. I see there's already a lot of people online here. Thank you guys so much for tuning in today. I hope I bring you a ton of value. There's not a whole lot of training for experienced agents, right? You know, there's a lot of stuff for new agents. There's not a lot of stuff for experienced agents. So that's why I wanted to do this today. There's a lot of agents who come to me about, you know, just being stuck in the business, you know, just plateauing out, leveling out, you know, they want to take their business to the next level. They just don't know quite how to, you know, get out of their rut because they've just gotten into these routines where they're doing the same thing over and over and over again. And they're just not really taken to another level. And you have to get out of that. You have to get out of that rut. You have to get out of that same routine there in order to take it to the next level. A lot of us get comfortable, right? We get comfortable. And then we feel like, you know, we're in a place where, you know, we feel like that we're putting in the work. We just need to be patient. And so we get into these routines and we just keep doing the same stuff, creating the same results, just thinking, you know, if I just keep going and just keep being patient, now that is part of it, right? That is a huge part of it. But we have to break out of our routines if we want to really take things to another level. So I wanted to do this training for experienced agents. This is a great training session for not only experienced agents, but also new agents, right, because new agents are, new agents go through the same exact thing just on a lower level. And, you know, later on in their careers as a new agent, when you hit that second year, third year, fourth year, fifth year, eighth year, 10th year, 15th year, you may hit this same exact brick wall that a lot of the experienced agents are having. So I wanted to do this just to get my thoughts out there to you about this so that hopefully you can maybe learn from my experiences and I can maybe shake it up a little bit. Maybe I can shake a little something into you today and change your perspective and change your actions on the daily so that you can change your results, okay? So I'm gonna give it a couple more minutes for people to come on really quickly before it gets started. I'm gonna be in Salt Lake, right? I'm leaving tomorrow to go to Salt Lake. If you guys can make it to Salt Lake, if anybody's close to Salt Lake, I would love to see you in Salt Lake, all right? There's a link in the description here in YouTube or you can go to zero2diamond.com backslash events, okay? That's where I post all the free tickets to my events. Guys, this is free, right? This is free. I don't charge for my events for the zero to diamond tour and actually in Salt Lake, I don't even have a sponsor. I'm the sponsor, right? I'm paying for the event myself and I'm still not charging the agents, okay? So from there, I'm going to be in Nashville, that's August 4th. I'm gonna be in Charleston, August 12th. I'm gonna be in Orlando speaking at the Florida Association of Realtors, August 26th. That's in Orlando. Then I'm gonna be in Dallas, September 8th. And I'm putting together Connecticut. I'm putting together Philly. I'm putting together Charlotte. I'm also looking at Vegas. So a lot of stuff going on in terms of me traveling. I feel so good to get back on the road. It's what I really love to do, like travel, see you guys, shake your hand and get on stage and hopefully inspire you guys to take your business to the next level. Guys, it's all about just taking what you have and then taking it to the next level. I don't care where you are right now. I just want you to take where you are and take it up a notch. That's it. You don't have to do a million dollars this year, okay? And if you're doing a million dollars this year, you don't have to do 10 million next year, right? It's not about the money. It's not about the number of transactions or it's not about any of that at all. It's about taking where you are and just adding a little bit to it, learning, becoming more efficient. Maybe you're adjusting or tweaking a little something to become more efficient, more scalable, right? Producing more and less time. I think you guys realize that I am a one-man production crew like I've got. I'm on four different platforms right now, okay? I'm recording this on another camera and I don't have a crew to do this. This is just me. I've set all this stuff up. I'm shooting videos. I'm selling 100 properties a year. I'm coaching, I'm traveling, I'm speaking. I'm posting on all platforms every day. So you guys can probably sit back and realize that I've become really good at learning how to produce more and less time. And so then I don't take that extra time and just do nothing. No, I'm learning how to do more and less time so that I can take this extra time and do even more where you multiply production. And not everybody's that ambitious, right? Seattle, yes. I'm gonna do a West Coast tour next summer. Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Hawaii, that's what I'm planning on. So we'll see how it all plays out. All right, I think everybody is tuned in and ready to roll. Next week at this same time, let me make sure I'm telling you guys right, yes. Next week at the same time, I'm gonna do a training session on NFTs. So and the reason I'm doing that is because what I can tell, nobody even knows what one is. Nobody knows what an NFT is or how to buy one. So I'm gonna do a training session next Tuesday at the same time, one PM central. And I'm gonna go through NFTs, crypto wallets, cryptocurrency, stuff like that. Just to bring you guys up to speed on my level of education, which isn't much by the way, but it's a lot more than a lot of you because a lot of you don't even know what an NFT is. So I want you to know what an NFT is, how to buy an NFT, right? So that you can be ready for my NFT project coming up soon, which a lot of you guys are gonna capitalize on and it's really gonna help a lot of people. So I'm excited about that. If you're not part of the free coaching program, right? At 02diamond.com, I have a completely free coaching program. Go there, 02diamond.com, download the 90 day action plan and get to work. Right, it's just that simple. Download, get to work. Download, get to work. All right, cool. Let's dive in here. And if you guys have questions, feel free to shout it out in the comments. I'm watching all the comments come through. I definitely wanna take some questions today, but I'm speaking to the experienced agents who have hit a brick wall in their career. Okay, you've hit that point where, okay, you have this routine, you've been building your business and you've got it to a point, but maybe you're at, let's say, 250 a year or 350 a year, right? You're making 350,000 a year, but you've made that same amount every year, okay, for like the last four years and you just can't quite seem to break out of this $350,000 a year income. So that's what I wanna talk to you guys about today and this is great again for any agents. It's not just experienced agents. This is good stuff to hear for anyone, okay? And I'm gonna really speak to you from my personal experiences of hitting these brick walls because everyone hits the brick wall. So that's the first thing you need to know about this is that everyone hits these walls. This is completely common. This is part of the process. This is something that everyone's gonna go through. You are no better than anyone else. It's kind of like making cold calls. A lot of people say, I'm scared to make calls. I'm not gonna make calls. Yeah, everyone is scared to make calls the first time they do it, but the real winners, they move forward with it. They just break through that fear and they say, you know what, I'm gonna do this because this is what's gonna cause my family to live their best life. And I want my family to live their best life. So I'm gonna do this. So, it's totally common to be scared to make calls in the beginning. It's totally common to run into frustrations in the business. It's totally common to hit these walls and to become frustrated and disappointed. So I wanna talk to you guys about my experiences with this and then I wanna talk about what I think it's gonna take for you guys to break through these brick walls. They're not really walls. They're just little road bumps. Realize that. These are not walls. They're road bumps and they're very easily driven over. If you have the right perspective, if you're thinking more on a long-term basis, if you are doing the right things to try to get just a little better every day, 1% better every day, guys, all right? So listen, before I dive into it, I just want you guys to know, and you probably can tell, I just want you guys to succeed so bad, so bad. I just wanna see you guys win. I just want to see you win. And when I say win, I'm talking about having a smile on your face. I'm talking about being so happy with life and enjoying your life, enjoying your career, enjoying your family, enjoying whatever it is that you do, your hobbies and everything included, I want you to enjoy it. I don't, we didn't get into real estate to be stressed out and have high anxiety and worry about deals and worry about inspections and this, that and the other. Don't quit worrying about that stuff. I want you to be happy. Two things, I want you to be satisfied with where you are and I want you to get better every day. I want you to work on getting better every day, just a little bit better, learn something new, tweak something you're doing, get a little better, all right? So listen, there's been plenty of times I've hit brick walls, okay? And listen, when I hit the brick wall, when I lost everything back in 2005, when I sold my last condo in January of 2005, before I got back into roofing mid-2005, eventually landed a job on an oil rig in 2007, the entire year of 2007. Now that was a, that wasn't a brick wall because I got back in the business, but that was a heck of a road bump, right? And a lot of people would have threw in the towel right then. A lot of people would have threw in the towel right then, but I didn't. I didn't know that I was gonna get back in real estate. I'll be honest with you. On that, I'll be dead honest. I didn't know I was gonna get back into real estate, but the good Lord and fate and destiny and everything just kind of led me right back into the business. And I just think I had a lot of unfinished business, right? I just, a lot of unfinished business. I wasn't gonna let this business take me out like that. So I'll tell you about one specific little hurdle that I had, and I've talked about this before, but, you know, I mean, well, there's too hard. Let's go back, okay? Whenever I got back in the business, okay? On the oil rig, I'm making $44,000 a year. $44,000 a year and risking my life, right? Risking my life. I come out of that and I make 100,000, 100,000 and 2008, right? Is that right? 80,000, 80,000 and 2008. So I made almost double what I made on the oil rig the year before, which was, I was a static. $80,000 as a real estate agent and I was a static. I was like, beside myself, if that tells you anything. And a lot of you are, I talk to you, I'm talking to you on the phone one-on-one and you're telling me you're in your first year, you're gonna make 35,000. Your goal was 150 and you're very deeply depressed. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? I sold four properties my first year. I made like $20,000, something like that. You made 30, you made more than me in my first year and you're depressed because your goal was 150,000 when really you're set up now to actually make that 150 your second year. It's crazy. The expectations that you guys are setting and the pressure you're putting on yourself and the anxiety that you're instilling is unreal and completely unnecessary, completely unnecessary. Stop doing this guys. Stop focusing on the results and how much money you make and what the transaction number is and start focusing on giving it all you have every day to contact as many people as you can and get just a little better, get a little better at communication, get a little better at efficiencies with processes of going through the transaction, what you're delegating, get better at delegation, right? Giving, handing off certain tasks to open your time up to be more efficient. I've become a master at that and this is something that is really hard for me, delegation because like being a single agent, I mean, I guess you guys can realize I'm not a good delegator and I'm still selling properties like I'm still showing properties. I'm still going to listing appointments even right now at this time. So I'm a horrible delegator. However, I have managed to figure out a way to, and everybody's different. I've figured out a way to delegate what I need to delegate to make my life easy and that's what you gotta figure out. What do you have to delegate to make your life easier? And this is part of taking your business to the next level because a lot of you may be holding on to every last little detail when you should be delegating so much, so much. And this is something that, I have to look at on a one-on-one basis. I have to look at this on a one-on-one basis and really talk to you about your specific situation to really go deeper with that subject in terms of what to delegate, how to delegate because everybody's different. A lot of people, a lot of agents, they want to delegate the showing of the properties. They want to get a showing agent, delegate the showings. I'm still showing my buyers. So everybody's different. You can't really judge the entire situation on or just give a blanket, okay, here. And that's one thing I really disagree with on a lot of the mainstream coaches is they give these general blanket trainings like here's exactly what you do every time. Here's what everyone should do. It's not, that's not the case. Everybody's different and has a different situations to deal with. So, you know, but just know that part of the process of taking it to the next level, especially if you're a single agent, right, is to find that level of delegation that you need to cross. And part of that, I'll tell you this before I move on, part of that is being okay with whoever you delegate some of the tasks to, you have to be okay with those tasks, not being perfect. You have to be okay with there being some mistakes. You have to be okay with them screwing up. If my assistant costs me $1,000 or $2,000 on a mistake she made, I'm fine with it. I talk to her, I'm like, what happened? She's like this, I'm like, listen, good job because she made an executive decision without me. She makes so many executive decisions without me that it makes my life so easy. I can afford to pay for that $1,000 mistake because of all the time that she allowed me to have and gave back to me that I invested back into my businesses that made me, I can't even count the number. It's not a thousand, it's more like millions. So, you know, listen, yes, we're gonna sit down and talk about the mistake and we're gonna make sure things like that don't happen again and we're gonna get better but I'm not gonna chastise her. I'm not gonna make her feel bad about making an executive decision. Everybody makes mistakes. I don't care if everything's perfect. I'm gonna stand up for her before I stand up for anybody else. I'll tell you that right now. I got her back over everybody's when it comes to business. If somebody wants to get mad at her for making a mistake, if it comes back on me that she makes a mistake and people are mad, you know, and then I'm not gonna turn around and say, oh, well it's my assistant's fault. I'm gonna take that. I'm gonna take that. So, delegation guys, I'm finding a real team, you're a team, you're a team with your assistant, all right? So, let's take it back now. When I got in the business, back in the business in 2008, I did $80,000, a static. The next year I do $100,000. I'm like, mind blown, okay? The very next year was the year of the BP oil spill, which was a serious, serious moment for us down here on the beach. I'm right on the Gulf of Mexico, on the beach selling primarily golf front, beach front condos. And it was a very scary moment. People, real estate agents were leaving here and going to Birmingham and going to Huntsville and going to Atlanta thinking that it's over down here. Honestly, sellers were dumping their properties. Buyers were throwing their hands up and saying, I don't want nothing to do with this. And in that year, I applied everything I learned through the crash and I made 150,000. I increased my income from 100,000 in 2009 to 150 in a very strange year where basically we had a mini crash. It was a local, it was a more localized crash. It was a crash, honestly. And I made 50% more money that year. Why? Because I applied everything I learned and everything that I teach you guys, every single video to that moment. And everybody was freaking out in the office and I stood back and my dad was there. And I said, listen guys, stay calm, call your clients, tell them what's going on, right? Get through your entire list and say, listen, here's what's going on. I'm gonna keep you informed. What can I do to help you, right? People are dumping properties. Do you wanna buy a property cheaper, you know? Or are you scared enough to dump your property because we can sell your property? Let me know what I can do to help you. When I run through my clients, boom, then the next step is people I don't know. I'm reaching out to people I don't know and I'm saying, how you doing? Is there anything I can do to help you with the oil spill? I mean, do you need information? Do you want updates? Do you wanna buy one of these cheap properties? Do you wanna sell? It's the same thing. It's the same thing when the market crashes. There's gonna be a three month delay, okay? There's gonna be a scary moment that nobody's expecting, right? It's gonna make everybody put the brakes on. Everybody's gonna step back. There's gonna be a three month little period there and during that moment, we gotta call our past clients. I mean, we gotta go hard and call our past clients and say, hey, did you see that thing that just happened, the interest rates went up or something? Who knows what happened? What's going on with you with this? What do you think about it? Because there's one of three things they're gonna have to do, okay? They're either gonna be getting ready to buy as prices come down. They're gonna sell because they're in trouble or they're gonna hold on and write it out. There's only one of three things that they're possibly going to do, right? So when the market takes a huge turn, a massive turn, okay? We, everyone that follows me, everybody that's part of Zero to Diamond, everybody that's on my team, every agent that I can possibly get to, we need to be ready to go all in in that moment, all in, okay? And I want you guys to be ready. Let's take it back to the 2010 when I made 150. That next year I made about 250. Then I got into a rut. Then I got into a rut. I got into a rut. I was sitting around 250 to 300 for a couple of years, right? There was, I was like at 250 to 300 for a couple of years. And I said, you know what, this ain't doing it. I was making my calls. I was doing my thing. I was sending out handwritten letters. I was spending back then. I was spending a good 60,000 plus a year on postcards and mail outs. Something that, to be honest with you, I don't suggest nowadays. The results I got out of that was not 60,000 worth compared to where I can put that 60,000 in today's world is not a comparison. But that's what I was doing because that was all I had, right? That was, I mean, there was only a couple of different things that I could actually do back then, okay? So what did I do during that time, right? What did I do? And everything stair steps for me, right? So one year, one year, because this is what happens, the cycle, the cycle of the year, everybody has cycles in their year, okay? There's a busy season and there's a slow season. There's a season where a lot of people are buying, everything's busy, and then there's this slow season where it's slower. For us down here, it's normally summertime, spring and summer are the busier, and in the winter, it's slower. Some places are the complete opposite, okay? So I don't know you guys' individual markets, but the fact is that there's a slow period and a busy season. And what I was doing, this is what I was doing up to the point that I decided to make a change. This is the first thing I want you to realize. If you wanna take your business to another level, let's play the seasons. Write that down, okay? This is one massive point I wanna make to you that I think you can use to take your business to the next level, okay? Let's play the seasons. What I think a lot of you are doing is doing the same activities all year long, but the seasons, all right, the buying season and the slow season are changing throughout the year, but you are doing the same exact activities regardless of what season it is. What you need to do, what I would love for you to do, what I wanna help you do is realize that there are different seasons and we need to recognize when these seasons are and we need to adjust what we're doing on a daily and weekly basis during the seasons, okay? What I started doing was this. When I realized that this could be something that could stair step my production every year, I started doing this. What I did was in the busy season, I didn't really make that many calls because I'm so busy selling, you know? Now, before I realized this, before I realized this, I was just calling, calling, calling all year long. I was making time to call when it was busy and then I was calling when it was slow. Yeah, I was just calling when I could, but I kinda had the same strategy all year long. I changed it up and in like 2012 or so, I switched it up. And what I did was, as I said, I'm gonna go even harder on my calls in the slow season because I was doing like, you know, three hours a day, kinda like what I tell you guys to do, okay? So what I realized is that in the slow season, I could actually make more calls during the slow season than I did all year long doing it the other way because the other way, I was just allotting a certain amount of time, you know, and I was just kinda hitting here or there. What I did differently when I wanted to take my business to the next level is I realized, I gotta play the seasons. And so by playing the seasons in the slow season, I made it a point that I was gonna make more calls in the slow season than I did all year using my other strategy. And then what happens is during the slow season, I build my database up, okay? I build my database up to a certain point whereas when the busy season comes, now my business explodes because I've created all these new relationships in the market during the slow season, okay? So what happens is is I make more calls in the slow season than I was before. I build my database up to the point where now I feel this busy season coming, I quit doing the calls and now I'm just riding the wave of this explosion of business. And then as that wave crashes and starts to flatten out and we get back into the slow season, now I'm right back on the phone and I wanna do the whole process over again. And what happens is as you make these relationships, you're accumulating. You are accumulating relationships, you're accumulating business, you're accumulating clients. And so as you're accumulating clients, those clients aren't going anywhere. Yes, some people may unsubscribe. Yes, you may have people use a different agent or whatever, okay? That's just part of it as well. I mean, the entire premise of building any business is literally taking the population, putting your content and putting your services in front of them, and then consolidating down and finding that concentrated group of the population who want to do business with you, who love you, who can't get enough of you, really want to see you do business with you, associate with you, all the above. So as you accumulate more clients in the off season, okay? That creates a really big buying season, right? Whenever everything's exploding. And then when the slow season comes again, you do it again, but now your business is still the same size as it was as you grew it to the last slow season. Now you're just adding to that, right? Now it's growing again. And now what happens? You make more money the next year. You make more money the next year. So then the slow season comes again and you go hard to build your database even further, and then boom, you stair step up again. This is what I use when I realized that I was in a, in a, in a, just a funk. I was like, what can I do here? Okay, let me play the season thing. Let me see if this thing works. Okay, and so I look at it as the off season, okay? Football players, baseball players, anybody in sports, you know that in the off season, that's when you get better. Not during the season, you get better in the off season. The people that are working the hardest in the off season, that's the people who are growing their business and getting better every year. You see these NFL players, they come in and they get better every year. Okay, they're not just getting better every year because they're having great seasons and that's what they're getting better because they're working harder in the off season every year to add to what they have already and continue to accumulate those skills, right? I hope that makes sense to you guys. Play the season. So I played the seasons and I took my 350 up to 600. I took my 350 up to 600. 2014, I had a hundred deals. I had a hundred deals. That was the first year I had a hundred deals and I made 600,000. And I'm like, thank you. I was the number one rematch agent in Alabama and I had a hundred deals and it felt good to get there. However, that wasn't where I wanted to be at the end of the day. I wanted to be at a million dollars GCI. I wanted to be at a million dollars gross commissions. That was the goal from day one. The entire time is to figure out how to get to the million dollars. So I wasn't completely satisfied yet, even though I was very happy with where I was, I wasn't completely satisfied. So what I did, what I did was I created this plan. I created a plan. I made 600,000 the next year. I said, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna make that million dollars. I'm gonna make that million dollars this year. This is gonna be 2015. I'm gonna make that million dollars. So here comes November, here comes December of 2014 and I make this plan and I really, you know, I create a simple math. It was simple math, okay? It was, this is what you have to do. These are how many calls you have to make. This is how many listing appointments. This is how many listings you need per week, per month in order to get to the million dollars that you wanna get to. I had it all planned out. And so here comes January and I'm off to the races. First of the year, I'm like, this is gonna be my year, 2015, I'm gonna make a million dollars this year. I mean, listen guys, I 100% believed it. It wasn't like I didn't, it didn't happen because I didn't think it was gonna happen, right? I believed it was gonna happen 100%. There was nothing that was gonna stop me from making that million dollars. So here comes January and I'm crushing, I'm crushing, I'm crushing. And I can't quite hit the numbers that I'm wanting but I'm not freaking out yet. It's just January, right? Here comes February, not quite hitting the numbers. Here comes March. Not quite hitting the numbers. And what I realized was that I was on track to hit 600,000 again. Now, this is the moment that I became, I wasn't depressed. I was more deeply frustrated, right? Deeply disappointed in myself. I just wanted it so bad. And listen guys, I was still in the mindset of relationships over transactions. Understand that through all this. Yes, I was trying to close the deals and make the money but I wish it was all focused on people, right? And every plan that I put in place was around how can I help more people? Okay, so don't get it twisted with how I'm talking about money right here. That wasn't, you know, that was a personal goal. That had nothing to do with my goals to help as many people as possible. The money part showed me that I was helping more people, right? So if I made a million dollars, I know I helped a lot of people. That was what it was for me. So here I go, looks like I'm gonna make 600 again, became deeply, deeply, deeply frustrated. Okay, incredibly frustrated. You know, I'm working the seasons. I did my calls in the off season. I made my database bigger. So theoretically, with creating a bigger database in the off season, I should make more income this year. But no, it looks like I'm gonna make 600 again. What's going on here? So then I went into a deep dive personal development stage where I researched all the top agents. I was researching agents that were, you know, selling a billion dollars a year, selling 500 million a year, selling 200 million a year. I was reading about them. I was reading books. I was watching videos. I was listening to podcasts. I was trying to figure out every little thing I could possibly figure out about why I can't do this. And through all that research, it finally landed me to hire a coach. Okay, and that was the one and only coach I ever hired because I was that desperate to really get to the next level. When I hired the coach, I had the coach for four months and it was more of like a counselor kind of thing. Like he went through the same process of call expires, do pre-listing packages, close the deal, all the stuff that I'm kind of, you know, coach against basically coach the exact opposite of, but there were so many positives to the experience for me because, you know, listen guys, there's three reasons why somebody would need a coach. They either need to learn the fundamentals, like there's something going on fundamentally. They don't understand the process. They need to know how to generate leads, close deals, whatever the case may be. So they either need to know the fundamentals, they either need accountability, okay, or their perspective is wrong and they need help mentally to view the situations correctly so that you can make the right moves, okay? And I walked into the coaching scenario thinking that my fundamentals are off. I'm thinking, you know, hey, I'm motivated, I'm hungry, my mentality is right where it needs to be. I definitely don't need to be held accountable. I definitely don't need to be held accountable. So what's next? Fundamentals. I have to be doing something fundamentally wrong. So I walked into the coaching scenario, walked into the program with the once a week call thinking my fundamentals are off. So I followed the program to a T. I followed it to a T. I'm calling expires. I'm doing pre-listing packages. I'm doing everything that I'm told to do because this is what I want. And what I realized after a four month run is that I didn't need fundamentals. I didn't need accountability. What I, where I was going wrong was my mentality, my mentality, my perspective, and it comes down to my four keys to success, right? You gotta believe, adapt, work hard and be patient. And I felt like I was those things, but I wasn't. I was missing the last one. This was the last piece for me. This was the last piece of the puzzle for me. I needed to learn how to be patient. I was working hard and I believed. I was adapting. I was adapting big time. I mean, I was shaking and moving. I mean, I adapted what I did through the year. I'm learning how to communicate better. I'm using better words. My tone is better. I'm making people feel like they're family. Connecting. I'm not even trying to close people. I'm just trying to be their friends and help them through whatever it is they're trying to do. And I'm getting better and better and better that along the way. And what I realized through my coaching sessions that four month period of time and getting to the point where, and I did end up the year with 600,000 again, at the end of the year, I didn't care that it was 600,000 again. That was the point right there. That was the huge, huge, huge turning point for me when I realized that I was gonna make 600 again and I didn't care that I was happy with the 600. I was happy with the 600. Because I knew that the 600 was my full potential because I was giving complete 100% effort. I was giving everything that I had to make that 600. And because I knew that that was all I had, I was gonna yield the highest results possible for me and at that point, you have to be happy with whatever those results are because you can't control the results. So I had to understand that you can't control the results. You can only control your actions and your efforts. And that was a huge, huge, huge thing for me. The very next year, I made 750. That was 2016. I didn't even make a million the next year. It was a 750 year, but it was better. It was better than the 600. And then the next year, 2017, was the first year I hit the million and I've hit a million every year since. So I wanna explain this process to you guys. I wanna explain this process to you guys of how this happened, how I got to the million and how I've continued to do the million every year since. I want you guys to understand the philosophy behind the entire process from a bird's eye view so that you understand that way you can look at your own business. You can look at your own business and you can say, okay, this is where I am, okay? And then over time, this many years, this is where I'm gonna be. I'm gonna stair step up to this level and then this is how I'm gonna maintain that level. Whatever that level is for you. I've got agents that wanna make 100,000 a year. That's all they wanna make. I've got agents that wanna do 200, 500, a million, two million, whatever level of ambition you have, it doesn't matter to me. I just wanna help you get to that level and stay at that level. And I wanna go through that process with you right now. So basically it goes like this, right? Your database, okay? Think about this. The size of your database, okay? The size of your database that is full of people that you are friends with, people that you have talked to, people that think of you as family, people that are getting weekly emails from you and see you on social media. And you guys feel like you're close. You guys feel that closeness. When I came back in the business in 2008 after I realized that it was relationships over transactions, not the other way around, I started having different kind of conversations with my clients. I was having conversations with my clients where they felt that I cared about them and I felt like we were there. It was like such a connection whereas before I was in the business, I was having these cold conversations. I could tell we had no connection. They didn't really care about me. We're just doing the deal and I didn't really even care about them to be honest with you. We're just doing the deal. I mean, I was kind of giving them what they're giving me but when I got back in the business 2008 after I realized that that's where I went wrong, my conversations were completely different. I'm not trying to sell people anything. I'm not trying to get you to buy or sell anything. I just wanna get to know you. I want you to know what I do and that I'm here to help you when you decide to do something whether it be today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, 10 years from now and I wanna help anybody you know buy or sell real estate. So these conversations were completely different. So when you understand that concept, that people decide who their real estate agent is by who their friend is in the business and the object is to create as many friends in the market as possible. When you get past that now, it's about how many friends you can create and the size of your income is gonna be dictated by the size of that database. Not the size of the database of internet leads you never talked to or people that you extracted or email addresses you bought somewhere. No, it's gonna be dictated by the amount of real friends in your database that are getting original content from you consistently and your names in front of them. Here's something to think about as you're building your database. Making a great first impression on people and they get that feeling. When people get that first impression from you and they feel like, man, this person really cares. This person really, you know, it seems like a hard worker and it seems dependable and honest and professional, you know, this is a great, this is a good guy. This is a good guy or good girl. When they get that feeling from you after that first conversation, and then you can take their data and you can start to hit them on a consistent basis. I love the weekly email and they see your name. What happens every time they see that email, they get that feeling again. They get that feeling again that they had the first time. They're like, oh, there's that Ricky. There's Ricky again. There's that great guy. There's that great guy. I'm gonna use him. I'm gonna use him as a real estate agent when I get ready to buy or sell. I'm sure it's gonna be a great experience. He's just a good person, right? He works hard, he cares about people. He does what he says he's gonna do. He's consistent, okay? You wanna create these great first impressions. You wanna collect that data and you wanna build your database, ladies and gentlemen, because that's gonna dictate the amount and the size of your income. The size of your database is gonna dictate the size of your income, okay? So what we have to understand is that a lot of agents who come into the business and they reach this level of 150,000 a year and they kinda plateau there and they just start hitting 150 everywhere. 150, 150, 150, 150, 150. And you kinda wonder why? I can tell you why. They came in the business. They were guns ablazing. They were talking to everybody. They built their database up to the point where they made the 150 and then they quit, they put their guns away. And now they're just living off their database. Understand this concept. Understand this concept, my friends. When you quit building your database and you just rely on your database for past clients and referrals, you just rely on your database. You're not really adding anyone to your database at all. You're not growing your database. Your number stays the same. Your income will plateau. Your income will plateau. It will level out. So I want you to understand that. If you're in a place right now where your income is leveled out at 50,000 a year, 100,000 a year, 150, whatever it is. And you've been hitting that number every year since. I can tell you, you're not talking to new people in the market you never talked to to give those great first impressions to collect their data, to add them to your database. That's not happening. So every year, if you take the slow season to grow the database, the busy season to close the database, the next slow season to grow your database even more, the busy season to close, the next slow season to grow it even more, the next season to close, the next season to grow it even more, you can create a skyscraper of a database, ladies and gentlemen, slowly but surely. Slowly but surely. It's just a matter of time. And I don't care if it takes you 10 years, 15 years. Keep building your database. The moment you stop building your database, your income plateaus. And listen, I'm speaking from experience. When I hit the million dollars in 2017, I quit making cold calls. I quit sending postcards. I quit doing, I was never doing social media for my real estate business. I quit doing everything I was doing except the weekly email to stay in touch with my database. That's the only activity that I did from 2017 to today. And what has happened? Every year a million dollars, million dollars, million dollars. Why? Because I took 15 years to build my database up to the point where I'm making a million dollars and now I can live off my database to maintain that million dollars. If you're at 250 and you wanna make 500, then you need to take the next couple years to build that database up to the point where you know how you've got your database up to the point where you can make the desired income every year? Because as you're building the database, you hit that desired income. You can't stop building the database until you hit the income you wanna hit, right? It wasn't like the beginning of 2017 I quit doing everything. No, it was the end of 2017 that I quit doing everything after I actually hit the million dollars. Then I'm like, okay, now I can let my database make me that million dollars every year. So I've made some really good points in my opinion here about working through the slow seasons, working the seasons, building the database. I've made some really good points about how to stair step your income every year. If you're in a rut, I can tell you right now chances are you're not adding anyone to your database on a consistent basis. And these are just facts, right? And I'm not gonna stereotype everyone. It's completely on an individual basis, okay? But what I wanted to do today was just tell you guys my story and everything that I went through with hitting these road bumps and everything that I did to get over these road bumps and everything I did to build my business up to the point that I wanted my desired income and then the process and the mentality behind getting there and staying there. Now I'm selling 100 properties a year, making a million dollars a year, working five hours a week in my real estate business. I'm working five hours a week in my real estate business, guys. Don't be jealous, don't be jealous of that. You don't know what I went through for 15 years to get where I'm at. Nobody wants to talk about that. They just wanna talk about, oh, 100 properties, five hours a week, million dollars, oh, Mr. Big Shot. Yeah, go make 100,000 calls with your finger, with your hand, look up the numbers on Spokio and Bigfoot and whitepages.com and do handwritten letters, spend 60 grand a year on postcards. You guys go do all that for 15 years and then come talk to me. You guys don't wanna do that and you're not gonna do that. And the cool thing about it is you don't have to do that. With today's technology, with companies like Redx, you can literally click a mouse, get thousands of numbers, another button, dial them at 100 dials an hour. You can make the same 100,000 calls that took me 15 years and a matter of two or three years. You guys could be exactly where I am right now within two to three years. From being brand new, you can be exactly where I am within two, three, four, five years, however long it takes you to build the database up to the point that I have mine because you guys, you guys have the technology. You guys have the resources that I didn't have. You guys can do things so much faster than it took me, but hardly any of you are taking advantage of it. Just give me two to three to four hard years. Create five new relationships with property owners every day for four years and tell me you're not the number one agent in your market. You create five new relationships with property owners every day, voice to voice, followed by a weekly email on the same day of the week forever for four years and tell me you're not the number one realtor in your market. I would love for you to go through that process and tell me you're not number one. It's not gonna happen. You're gonna be number one. All right, so I hope you guys go back. If you just tune in and watch this entire video, let me know what, I'll take a couple of questions. If you guys have any questions, I'm gonna put those in the comments. I'll be here for another couple of minutes and I just wanted to say thank you guys. I hope you guys can tell how much I really want you guys to win so bad and I'll do anything to help you do that. While I'm waiting on a couple of questions here, I just wanna reiterate that next week at the same time, I'm gonna do training on NFTs. What are NFTs? How do you buy NFTs? All that good stuff because a lot of people have no idea. They're completely oblivious. I'm gonna be in Salt Lake the day after tomorrow, Thursday. Cannot wait to see you guys there. If you're anywhere close to Salt Lake, I would love to see you, zero-to-diamond.com back slash events or link in the YouTube description. It's gonna be a lot of fun. I'll also be in many other cities so just go there and check it out. And if you're not part of the free coaching program, okay, at zero-to-diamond.com, click the button, credit an account, download the 90-day action plan and get to work guys, it's completely free. And if you guys need anything, DM me on Instagram and also the Discord. If you guys aren't on the Discord yet, the Discord is at around 2,000 agents already. So I'm gonna put a link for that. We're making live calls in the Discord every day so you guys can go there and make live calls with us and with many other agents in the Discord. Let's see, let me add that right here so you guys can connect there. Discord is better than the Facebook group. I gotta be honest with you. Join the ZTD Discord. It is much better. Total transparency. Let's see, I'll put it right here too in the comments. Boom. You guys can connect there, ask me questions, post your daily results on Discord. I actually will see them as opposed to Facebook. Not, I can't, I mean, I only see certain ones on Facebook because there's an algorithm in place. There's not an algorithm with Discord. I see everything in real time. I can scroll back, chronological order. So definitely connect with me and all the rest of the agents there and let's hold each other accountable. Let's make our live calls there and let's post our daily results there and so on and so forth. Let's see, is the link not working? Let's see, it should work. Let me check real quick, boom. Yes, it's working. It's working, yes, and there's 2,000 members. That's exciting. The link is working. So just try it on a different browser or something. All right, I'm gonna take a couple of questions real quick before I roll here and also I'm gonna be doing live calls pretty soon. Here in the next two hours, I'll be right back here live, doing live calls with an agent. So I'm looking forward to doing that as well. How big's my database? Right now it's 15,000 people. All right, let's see. Here's a good one. Hey, Ricky, if an agent has never made a call and wants to ease into making calls, what's the best type of call to make? Geo Leads or just calling around an area of an active listing. Sebastian, that is exactly the same thing, okay? Geo Leads is calling around an area of an active listing. But to answer your question, I would start out with Geo Leads and Expires, even do for sell by owners if you're new to it, just to kinda get your feet wet, you're gonna wanna settle into Geo Leads and Expires. You wanna go back on the Expires and go back a couple years and call old Expires, new Expires, hit the Expires, do Geo Leads, mix it up, call some internet leads, call some past clients and referrals, do some for sell by owners. Mix it up, diversify who you're calling in your market. Thanks for the question, my man. Let's see. Okay, here's one, success after 50 possible. Absolutely, you have a great, listen, do you know how much you can accomplish in five years, not to mention 10 or 15 years? It's ungodfell, like in today's world, where you can literally do things 10 times faster than it took me when I started, you can literally set yourself up within a good five years. I mean, I just kinda went through that and said that if you guys gave me three to five hard years, you could be the number one agent in your market, without a doubt. All right, looking for another question, looking for another question, guys. Ooh, I love this one. How would you say that you anticipate the market shifting itself as the Fed eventually begins to stop buying bonds? It seems listing prices are highly inflated with rates keeping volume high. Absolutely, my guy, that's a really good point, a really good question. So basically, man, listen, here's the bottom line, okay, and here's the real bottom line. For real estate agents, like for us as a human race, that matters because the markets and this and that were invested into the market, things of that nature. But as a real estate agent, we don't really care about that. Yes, we care because then we have to consult our clients through and navigate that, but we don't need to be predicting what the market's gonna do. We never need to predict what the market is gonna do. We always tell clients that the market has done what it's doing now and then let them make a decision. Would I ever try to predict what the market is gonna do? That will get you in trouble every single time. No one knows what is gonna happen, but listen, the market is gonna turn around at some point and I'll link a video in the under YouTube about this euphoric shift that's fixing to happen for real estate agents. We're gonna be in a complete state of euphoria when every seller, this is the largest bubble of pent-up seller demand that we've ever seen. I've never seen a bubble of so big of sellers who want to sell, but can't, okay? They can't because they're scared to leave money on the table. They can't because there's nowhere to go. That is going to change at some point. When it does, they're gonna realize it on the same day. They're all gonna call their real estate agent that if you guys are making calls and finding these sellers who don't have anywhere to go, that's the perfect client you want right now. You want the sellers who are saying, you know, there's nowhere to go. I don't know what to do. I sure wouldn't move. I'd love to sell if I could find a place. Cool. You need to save those for the day that I'm telling you is gonna happen where it explodes. They all call you on the same day and say sell, sell, sell before it goes down because they're gonna realize we've hit a top at some point and they're all gonna realize it at the same time. Feds go, you know, fed, they raise the interest rate, stop buying bonds, whatever the case may be, they're gonna realize it and they're gonna want to sell all at the same time. When the market slows down, that means buyers went away but we're not gonna lose all the buyers. There's still gonna be some there and we're gonna have those buyers on a pocket that just lost on three deals. Now all of a sudden you're gonna have a lot of listings to sell those buyers. You're gonna double in a bunch of deals. This is if you're putting in the work to create five new friends or property owners every day and building that database. And the cool thing is it doesn't matter if what I'm saying doesn't happen. You win either way. Guys, I'm trying to put you in position to win regardless if you guys will just listen to me. I'm trying to help you guys win no matter what happens. And put you in a position, William, where what you're saying as a real estate agent doesn't matter. As a human being, sure. As an investor, sure. But as a real estate agent, closings are gonna continue to happen every single day for the rest of your life, no matter what the market does. Cool guys, if you guys have any more questions just hit me up on Instagram or on Discord. Discord is a really good place to get me now. I've got a lot of attention right there. You can DM me there on Discord or ask me questions in the Ask Ricky channel on Discord. And I hope you guys got a lot of value out of this. It was very therapeutic for me to get all this off my chest and kind of just get it out there for you. And again, I hope it helped a lot. And I'll see you guys at Salt Lake or sitting near you real soon. And again, please let me know what I could do to help you. Talk to you guys soon.