 What's up, my zero to diamond peeps? Ricky Kruth here with another zero to diamond show. Today, I got Colton Lindsey with me. What's up, my brother? What's up, Ricky? How you doing, my man? Good, man. What you up to today? Right now, I'm just freaking putting together the details for the summit in Dallas. I'm getting excited about that. I had a conversation with Chaston and the AV team and getting the venue booked. So I'm super excited about that. Sweet, sweet. So before I get into the five stages real estate agent, because that's going to be the theme of this event that we're putting together in Dallas, tell me more about the event real quick and for everybody listening, because I haven't really blasted my audience with it at all. So give us a little sneak peek of what we're looking at. OK, so here's the reality of it, dude. I freaking, and I think I told you this, I do a lot of breath work and meditation. I had this epiphany from the ether, from who the fuck knows where it came from, says, did you got to do an event? You got to do it in Dallas. And I have no reason why Dallas, because I haven't been there since I was like four, right? So it doesn't make sense for me to be there. But it's like, dude, you got to have Ricky Carruth, you got to have Brian Cassella, you got to have Joshua Smith, and you got to have Danny Morrell. And I really didn't know if you were going to do it, but you said yes, you're on it. I knew BC was there. I wasn't sure if Josh could make it or not. He said he's going to be there. And really, dude, Danny was up in the air, but Danny just committed to come too. So it's like, this event is going to be two and a half days because we have the VIP night, and it's going to be fully immersed, taking agents from where they're at today to at least 40 to 75 deals a year if they want to get there or more, and build out a level five team. So you're speaking there, Danny's speaking there, Josh is speaking there, Chaston's speaking there, Brian's speaking there. I'm going to do some speaking there. It's going to be fucking epic. It's going to be in Dallas, it's going to be September. I'm really, really excited about this, man. Out of all the events that I've done over the past couple of years, this is the one I'm most excited about so far, because like I said from day one, it's bringing all of the new age, up-and-coming, younger coaches that are using social media to build the brand, all in one event, on a two-day event, one place in Dallas. I'm just super stoked about it. So for you guys watching or watching the replay or whatever, there's a waiting list for this event. There's a link in the description. What we're doing is we're going to collect everybody off the waiting list, because we haven't completely nailed down the venue yet. So we're working on the venue, and we're working to put a couple other things together before actually release the tickets. So there's going to be limited tickets. So we're going to take this waiting list to figure out everybody that actually is serious about coming to Dallas. And then once we have the tickets available, we're going to release those tickets to the waiting list. Is that the way we're doing it? Exactly, right. So we already have so many people that are interested. I mean, with your following, my following, with Brian's following, what we want to be able to do is give it to the people that have been our loyal followers first and foremost, because we know they're committed. We know that they're the ones that are going to be doing the work to go from level one to level five. I think that's part of the illusion, right? They see our social media, and they think, oh, fuck, we're going to go kiteboarding in Aruba just because we started putting some YouTube videos up. The truth is we've done hours and hours of work behind the scenes to produce our network of cold calling and getting that database built to where we can make $750 a million a year and be able to do these things and give back. And that's what we're going to do at this event. We're going to teach you guys exactly how to do that to focus on the right thing at the right time. But you've got to get on the wait list. People on the wait list, first of all, they're going to get the special announcements. They're going to get the first opportunity for the VIP tickets. They're going to be the ones that are going to be a part of the free virtual summit that we're doing with some of the speakers and a lot of other things that we're going to be throwing in. I've got some other cool things with the VIP tickets that we're going to be doing as well. So you've got to get on that list. How do they get on the list? Do you have a link in this video or something? Like I said, in the description below, there's a link to get on the waiting list. What I think is really cool about this, the reason I really, I mean, on top of it being the up and coming coaches in the industry, what I really like about it is there's a theme behind it. It's not just we're going to bring in some speakers. We're going to give them a couple of topics. They're going to, this speaker's going to talk about what they want to talk about. It's kind of all over the place, right? Right. It's really cool because there's going to be a theme and the theme is going to be the five stages of a real estate agent that Colton created a while back. And we're going to go step by step through these stages. You're going to identify where you are, what stage you are in, and then we're going to talk about how you progress to that next stage. If you're a level two agent, we want to take you to a level three. If you're a level four, we want to take you to a level five from a one, so on and so forth. So I think it's really cool because we're going to keep that theme, and we're going to pick out the different speakers for the different times to speak about the progression of these levels. So I'm really excited about that because there's not a lot of events that have a real theme behind it. It's just kind of all over the place. Yeah, that's one of the things I wanted to create with the WJR Academy is a place number one where agents could identify, where am I? Because this is what I love about your message, Ricky. How do we reduce the failure rate for realtors? And we know that that failure rate is 87% in the first year or two. That's a level one. We all start at level one. We're all doing less than 10 deals a year to get started. We're all making less than $50,000 a year to get started. And we have to hop in. And how do we go from a level one doing less than $50,000 a year to a level five, where we're doing a half million a million dollars a year? There are some gaps and some steps in between there. In so many level one agents, they fail because they hop in trying to do what a level three or a level four agents doing. So that is the message of this event. And we're going to walk you guys through so you know where you're at, whether it's level one or level three or level four. And we're going to identify that and move you to the next level or two. Yeah, it's like jujitsu or martial arts. There's white belts. There's yellow belts. There's orange belts. There's green belts. You just don't go from white to black. There's all those belts in the middle. And you have to go through all those different stages and go through those different tests to progress to each stage to figure out, you know, because you can't like, it's like hiring an assistant. Like a lot of people want to hire an assistant too early before they've even went through the trenches to know what their assistant needs to be doing or what they need to train their assistant on because they haven't even done those tasks theirself yet or done those tasks enough to know exactly how they need to train their assistant to handle those tasks. And so a lot of agents seriously try to get ahead of theirself. Like they try to go straight from a one to a three, right? And so on and so forth. So I think it's really cool that you put this together like that. Yeah, and that's what, I mean, a level three agent's what's called the leverage level. That's where you begin to leverage yourself with the right CRM, with the right transaction coordinator or the right assistant. And here's the mistake where most agents make. If they get past level one and they're in level two which is 10 to 20 deals a year and they can get out of their ego, right? Cause I mean in today's market you sell 15 houses and you can make a hundred thousand, $125,000. And all of a sudden our egos are so big we've got everything fucking figured out. If you get past that spot go to level three this is where most agents peak 20 to 40 deals a year. And it's because they do stupid shit like hire three or four buyers agents before they hire an assistant, right? They wanna build out this fucking team so they don't have to work. Like Ricky, do you still work every day? Dude, today I set up so many appointments, man. Showings, I've got buyers for the next two weeks. I've filled up my calendar. I've got a couple of spots open next week but I've got listing appointments, podcasts like this and showings. The whole next week and a half is totally full. And also closings, I'm going to closings and going to, I'm showing buyers properties. I'm looking up properties to send the buyers to try to figure out which ones they wanna see and narrowing it down. Like I'm putting in the work every single day and it's the work that nobody wants to do and it's the work I love to do. And if like you see some similarity there between top producers and putting in the work and the low producers who sit around talking about the deals that got away, right? And that they don't wanna show property because they're scared they're gonna waste their time on somebody that may or may not buy a property. I was talking to an agent today and he was in my market and he showed one of my listings and I was like, he gave me some feedback and he said, oh, you know, I'm just here putting in this work and wasting my whole weekend showing property to these people who, you know and I was like, man, you're looking at this all wrong, bro. Like the more time you waste on people trying to help them and deepen those relationships regardless if they buy or not, you know it's gonna turn into deals. Like they're gonna call you back in five years and do a deal. Like you need to be happy to put that work in regardless if they buy or sell. Say to yourself, you need to be happy with the effort you're putting in not necessarily results every single time. You know what I mean? Yep. Well, that's where as a level three agent they get stuck because here's what happens is they for some reason, oh, I got my damn thing calling here, damn Google voice. So what happens is they start focusing on the wrong thing at the wrong time. Okay. And so now all of a sudden they've spent crappy money on stupid stuff. Here's what I mean by that. I make my first 150 grand, so I go buy a Land Rover. I go buy a bigger house. I go put shit on my credit card. And now you know what happens at level three, Ricky is we watch these guys and gals work in nine days a week, 27 hours a day and they're paying for their liabilities. So they're not even running profitable businesses and they become like, why did we get into business in the first place? It was to make more money, to have more financial freedom and to have a happier life. That's the whole reason we did it. But now all of a sudden we're seeing people come to slaves to their businesses, literally. And they're turning to addictions, they're turning to unhappiness, they're turning to unfaithful marriages, they're turning to drugs, to whatever and they're never actually getting the whole reason they got into business in the first place. It's because you're not leveraging the right way. We're gonna teach you how to leverage the right way. So I mean, when people hear you say, dude, I'm set up appointments, I'm showing homes, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. It's like, they're like, well fuck, how do I do it all? We're gonna teach you literal systems and tools that you can apply immediately from guys like Ricky, guys like Josh, I mean, Josh's team did 300 million in sales last year, right? Like their volume is ridiculous. And so you've gotta learn these tools and these systems to be able to do that. And that's what we're gonna teach there. Yeah, so for those of you who just tuning in, we're doing an event in Dallas, Brian Cassell, Joshua Smith, Jason J. Miles, Colton, me, we're all gonna be there. You have to get on the waiting list in order to get that first tickets to come through once we lock in the venue, which we're almost there on a couple of different things. So walk me through the five stages of a real estate agent. Like what is level one? Like what are the characteristics of a level one agent? What about the second level? What graduates somebody from one to two? Like walk me through this. I'm just putting some comments on the post here on the YouTube. Get on the list, gang. Okay, so level one is this. This is, everyone starts here. This person's doing zero to 10 deals a year. They're making less than $50,000 and they need to focus on two things most. Number one, set fricking appointments. You need to get meeting with buyers and sellers immediately and you need to get that cash flow coming in. Number two is get better at setting appointments and getting contract signed, which is improving your skill set as a sales person. The third thing that we do as a level two is we then start to really grow our network. And I know you teach this in Zero to Diamond. You're calling people and at the very least you're getting their email and you're putting them into your email list and you're sending them something and once a week or whatever it is that you do. But what happens is, is we see these level one agents trying to put Facebook ads up, trying to do podcasts, trying to build their Instagram to 40, 30,000 followers and that's the wrong focus. We need appointments set number one and we need skill set build number two with our prospecting, our communicating and our setting appointments and getting contract signed. So that's level one. We know that 87% of you guys are going to fell out in the first 12 to 24 months at this level by doing the wrong thing. And level two. Well, what's up right there at level one? Like I wanted to make a few points here. Like you said that they might run into a problem trying to get their Instagram up to 40,000 followers and run out a bunch of Facebook ads and stuff like that. That's interesting because when I did my video on how to make $100,000 in your first year as a real estate agent, I specifically said in your first year, it's okay to post. It's okay to work social media, right? Your personal profile, post on your business page, maybe do a little ad if you want here or there but do not do any heavy social media pushing, social media advertising. Don't spend a lot of money there. So on and so forth. Is that what you're saying? Is exactly what I'm saying. And I mean, don't go sign up with Zillow and start paying $3,000 a month because you don't have the cash to do it. The whole purpose of business is get cash in not to spend cash out. Most agents that you see today, you hear about these expansion teams all across North America today, they're not fucking profitable. Why are we in business to be profitable? The first step to do it and you could post some stuff here there, be consistent, make a post once a day or whatever and start to get it together but don't be wasting three, four, five hours a day on that. Then three, four, five hours a day talking to people and getting in front of people and presenting to people. So a level one agents to specifically focus on how can we get in front of more buyers and sellers? Right. And then B, once we've realized that that's what we need to be doing on a consistent basis we step it up just a notch before we go to level two and we try to figure out the skills of how to effectively communicate with these people. Exactly. And when we do this too as a sales skill that sales skill will then later on in levels three, four and five translate into leadership skills because the only different thing between a leader and a sales person is you call it a leader. But like for example, you have assistance now, right? You lead your assistance and your ability to communicate and sell them on doing their job is a skill set that you've acquired from becoming a great sales person. So yeah, get great at the sales process. Don't waste time doing other crap. Okay, so once we've realized that throughout our entire career it needs to be about getting in front of more buyers and sellers and then effectively communicating with these people, right? What is level two? Level two is we're gonna bump it up. We're doing an agency doing somewhere 10 to 20 deals a year. Okay, you're doing with today's commissions depend on your marketplace, anywhere from 50 to $150,000 in commissions, which is, you know, $100,000, $150,000, a lot of money for some people. I think about when I first was even thinking of real estate, I was like, if I can make 75 grand a year, I'm stoked, right? I never thought I'd make 150 grand in a month. That just wasn't on my radar. So we get an ego at this point, right? We make $150,000 and we think we have it all figured out. But the truth is you just gotta do more even better at what you did to get you to that point. You've got to talk to more people and set more appointments. So level one, you're setting three or so appointments a week. Level two, you've got to be getting five appointments set a week or more. And you've got to continually grow that skill set, but now you've got to really focus on growing your network because everything is about, and you know this because you teach it in zero diamond, it's about relationships. So I want to focus on building some killer relationships at this level. I'm really starting to get my CRM into place and I'm starting to get organized on how I can grow these relationships and develop them over time. So level two is realizing that we need to, okay, level one, we need to stay in front of people and learn how to communicate. Level two is realizing that we need not only to learn how to communicate, but also to develop lifelong relationship with these people and put a system in place to stay in touch with them forever. Right, and I don't even know that you need a major system at this place. You need a beginning system and you're going to develop that system with time. Okay, cool, cool. So at this point, we don't have an assistant. We do have an assistant. We're at 150,000 a year. What do we do? You may want to start getting a transaction coordinator at this point, but I personally think you need to do 15, 20 deals yourself so you know the process before you hire that person. And really we're still looking at 10 to 20 deals a year at this point is level two. So I teach level three is when you really want to get an assistant. Maybe a transaction coordinator at like a top tier level too when you're doing the 20 deals. And you almost said zero to diamond in there and you stopped yourself. And if it happens, man, just let it out. If you don't want to get an assistant, just go ahead and flow with it. But okay, so at this point, we may or may not have hired an assistant. We're doing 150,000 a year. And really, I like this because at this point, we're actually to the point where we've done a lot of business and we're really to the point where we just need to put our heads down and do more to get more experience, right? We're right on the verge of needing an assistant but we need to push through a little more to get a little more experience to figure out exactly what they need to do for us to take the pressure off to where we can do more business from having the assistant. So. And there's two really important systems that you need to build in your life and your business at this point is a level two becoming level three. One is you need a life management system. You need to be able to consciously create your days every single day versus let your days consciously, or let your days unconsciously create you. Too many agents don't have a game plan every single day and even if they say they have some time blocking, which is horrible language by the way, they don't fucking do it. Like you need to set up like, here's my three to five major outcomes I want for the day and here's the three to five massive actions that are gonna drive me there. Everything else is a distraction but the second thing that we need as a system at this point is we need a financial management system, Ricky, because too many agents and you've seen it. They fucking go and buy cars they don't need. They buy a bigger house. They buy jewelry, nice suits, nice stuff but now all of a sudden they're not paying themselves first. They're not buying investment properties. They're not creating past residual income. They're not creating anything towards financial freedom. So you need to have a financial management system in place at this point and get locked in on your finances. So basically figure out what your budget is, what money will hear, what money is going there, how much we're gonna save every month, so on and so forth. Is that what you're talking about? Exactly and I believe your first expense is your profit. Meaning you're taking money out and you're putting it into what I call a financial freedom account so that you're gonna buy real estate with it. You're gonna, and I put the money in the stock market. Maybe that's not your thing. I buy commodities but I buy and invest in things that pay me interest over and over again, over and over again and I make that my first expense. I don't make anything else. I don't even make my salary the first expense. That investment account is my first expense. I love stocks, by the way. I think my favorite out of everything. Real estate's good too. Hey, I love stocks and real estate. I made a lot of money in both of them. I have about equal amount of money in both. Okay, so level, that was level two. Two. Okay, level three. So level three is we're doing, this is where most agents peak, okay? It's 20 to 40 deals a year roughly and what's funny is I made the chart kind of like to give you guys an idea, 150 to $250,000 in revenue but most level three agents I see are making like 180,000 because what happens is they didn't build a relationship-based business. They have these liabilities that they just need to constantly pay for so they're chasing tell for business and they're cutting their commissions and they're making less dollars per deal. We wanna actually teach you to make more money per deal if it makes sense with the relationship. We don't want you to take advantage of relationships and make it about the deal but we don't want you to just cut yourself short to where you're making less money just to pay your liabilities, okay? This is the point now where you need to leverage. Because you have to make so much money to pay for the crappy liabilities you bought, you find yourself reacting and working, like I said, 29 hours a day, eight days a week and you don't take the time to hire a great assistant. This is the level where you need to get a great assistant on your team so you can focus on what got you to this point which is setting more appointments and getting even better at your communication and relationship skills. That's it. The third part of that is you have to continually grow that relationship but now, how do I stay in touch with it? I believe branding is three things. Number one is your network, your tribe, the people that are in your database. Number two is your message. For example, Ricky, my message with the WGR is make a difference, right? A message I get with zero to diamond is reduce the failure rate with realtors and I'm sure you have some sort of message for your real estate people too, right? So we have this message now that we have to deliver to our tribe, to our network and we have to do it repetitively. What's the medium to do that? How are we gonna do that? Today, we can retarget these people online with social media so that they see our content over and over again. So this is the stage where we wanna step up our social media game with our advertising and heavy push there or was it level two? Level three, level three is where we really wanna create that really solid, what I call, attraction-based marketing system. We're like, I'll give you an example today. I'm doing a deal, listing contract signed for $300,000. I never met the person and it actually comes because part of my network are other real estate agents. So it comes from another agent five hours south of me that says, hey, I need you to take care of these people. Guess what? I just got a $300,000 listing signed. I never even had to meet either of these people in person. Not to say that you don't wanna meet people in person, but that's how easy deals can come to you if you set your network up the right way. Right, and at this point, your database is actually to the size where you can plug it into Facebook. Because I mean, if you have 100 people, 50 people, something like that, it's not really big enough audience to plug into a Facebook custom audience or Google or Instagram or anything like that. So at this point, you built the database. It's the size enough where you can actually get something out of retargeting them. Exactly, and that's what we have a map that we're gonna show you guys at the summit that says, hey, here's the 10 milestones you need for level one. Here's the 10 milestones you need for level two, for level three. And some of these milestones are, get 50 people in your SOI, get 100 people into your people, farm works your network, and you start to build this database. And then it shows you exactly how to do it. So, exactly. Okay, so level one, we're gonna learn that we need to talk to people. We need to get in front of buyers and sellers. And then once we have figured out the best avenue that works for us, because there's so many avenues, you find one that works for you, then it's about talking to more people and developing a skill of communicating with these people. And then level two, we're stepping our income game up because now we've stepped our communication game up and we're just trying to go deeper with those relationships and start a system to stay in touch with these people forever because we realize, hey, we need to create lifelong relationships with our clients. This isn't just a one and done. This isn't a lambam. This is a lifelong business that we're gonna be in. These are lifelong clients that are gonna come back to us, repeat business referrals and referrals of referrals. Right, cool. Exactly. So for example, that lady I just told you about, that's her second referral she sent me in the last 60 days. Okay, her second deal that I just had to go get signed. Okay, I'll give you another example. I got two people in my network and love them. Each of them, I'll probably do six deals with each of them. So that's 12 transactions with just two different people throughout the year. So these relationships that I built over time that I cultivate and that I stay in touch with and that I take care of, these are the types of relationships we wanna build and we wanna be able to keep our message in front of them and other people so we get other deals. Because there's some people you do deals with maybe once every three years, but then there's some you're gonna do multiple deals per year. So just out of curiosity, you get a referral from this lady, you go get this contract signed. Are you personally taking this contract or sending this contract to this lady to get it signed? Are you dealing with that or is that somebody on your team? So for these particular ones, I actually am meeting with these people. This lady is 80 years old. And so, but you know what surprisingly, she's great at text messaging and computer stuff. So a lot of my older clients, like I got another guy who's 65, he just doesn't get how it works, right? So we gotta take time to just walk him through everything. And he lives like four hours South. So it turns into a 20 minute phone call to walk through just to sign a doc you sign, which is, you know what though, guess what, it's my second transaction I'm doing with him in five years. So is it worth it? Yeah, it's definitely worth it. I'll tell you what I do sometimes when they can't do it. They just absolutely cannot, you can't even walk them through it. I just overnighted to him, put a little package in there for them to overnight it back. So like that's interesting, man, because you have a team in place. However, you personally went and got this contract signed. I think that's really something I need to talk about for a second because I'm really big on if someone sends me a referral, I have to treat, I have to handle that referral. Like I cannot send that to somebody else because the person that sent me the referral is expecting that referral to be handled in a certain way and to be treated as if they're family. And so for you to step up and actually do that yourself rather than just refer it out to another agent, to me, shows what kind of agents you are. Yeah, you know what, and there's different, and when we'll talk about like a level five agent versus level four agent, there are different ways that I have a lot of my deals now that are worked by my team. Certain situations like this, listen, it's about keeping great relationships because great relationships keep the business going. And really that's my job at every level is how do I, who are my key relationships and how do I grow those relationships? So, okay, that's level two, level three. We're getting into some remarketing. We're getting into some, we're getting into the fact that we have more business that we can handle so we have to bring on an assistant and train them properly based on the experience that we have in the market up to that point. And that allows us to go deeper with developing the communication skills better and better and better to get to the level four, which is what? Right, and before we go on, I wanna make sure level three is not your time to go hire buyers agents. And I know you don't have a team, Ricky, but people that build out teams, they think I need to go hire buyers agents. No, you need to leverage yourself so you can do more production. It's about maxing out yourself and that's an assistant and a transaction coordinator. Level four. Level four is doing somewhere around 40 to 75 deals a year. It's $250 to $500,000 in revenue depending on where your market is. And here's what's important. You're still doing 80% or more of the production. This isn't like, hey, I'm doing 75 deals and my team's doing most production. I'm still doing most production. So then your question becomes is, well, what does my team look like? Because now I start to hire more support, right? So for example, I begin with doing what's called junior agents. These are people that are going to go put a sign up, go put a key box up, maybe leverage my time if I absolutely need it to go show homes or they're going to go door knocking before an open house or they're going to do phone call prospecting in addition to add to my database, right? These are guys that are learning the ropes and starting to build their business with me. They're not just taking over my business right away. Did you follow me here? So at this point, we want to get even more leverage. For example, this is when I first hired a marketer into my team, right? That's a very important role, especially in my business today. I have a full-time video editor and social media guy. I hired him at this point, not at level three, not at level two, because really it's not a huge money maker to you until you can monetize it later on. So don't go making the wrong hire and the wrong place is my point here. You follow me? Yeah, yeah, definitely too early is really the biggest thing because people want to hire now so that they can take work off of them when it's really the work that they need to continue doing longer. Like you always, to me, I've always waited too long to hire people. Like I've always waited too long to hire an assistant. I waited until I had 30 listings. I was overwhelmed. I could, I was going crazy is the reason why I hired an assistant. And then like when I started, when I'm editing videos, like I edit all my YouTube videos for like a year and a half. And I was doing like till midnight every night for way longer than I should have. I should just hire somebody earlier but always wait too long because I'm not scared to put the work in because I want to know how the process really works. That way when I hire somebody, I know what they're supposed to be doing, what can be done, what is, what needs to be done. So I think it can be a good and bad thing to wait too long but it's all, it's worked out for me and I don't mind putting in the work. So, okay, that's level three. Where do we, what, I mean, tell me. I want to know about number four. So number four is we're doing that 40 to 75 deals a year, 250 to 400 or $500,000. This is where we need to get really, really crisp on our systems. Like our systems have got to be locked in and I think there's six systems. Here's the challenge with you guys. You keep your systems in your head. You got to get them documented so that a 12 year old could follow them, right? So I think the first system you got to get into place is your prospecting system. I know you probably already have one in place at this time but it's all in your head. Get it documented so it's an easy process to flow. Second system that you need to get into place is what I call your life management system. This is where you, what I call daily smart day. It's a 30 minute meeting with yourself every single day that crystallizes your day. What does that look like? Does that involve prospecting? Does it involve going to the gym? Does it involve going to swimming? Does it involve taking your kids to dance? Does it involve, what does it involve? You're focused on your most important outcomes for the day. Act on those versus reacting to other shit. Third system you need in place is your financial management system and a system that teaches you to go towards financial freedom. My definition of financial freedom is this. Passive or residual income pays for your desired lifestyle, that's it, okay? Fourth system that you need to get in place you need a support system because shit happens in business. In fact, what I tell my mastermind clients when they do a flag on the hill call with me, Rick, I said, hey, we're gonna make a flag for six to 12 months down the road. We're gonna create a plan to get there and be prepared, your plan's gonna get fucked up. Your plan is going to get jacked up along the way and that's where the opportunity is. But when that happens and we get emotionally tight into shit, our highs are where we make our money, our lows is where we grow. We need a support system like you've created with zero to diamond, like I've created with the WJR Academy. You need that type of circle to be around if that makes sense. Your fifth system you definitely need in place and documented, like you've been doing these systems, guys. What I'm saying right now is crystallize them. Get them just fucking awesome at this point is your attraction-based marketing system. This is gonna include stuff like how do I stay in touch with my network? How do I give amazing customer service to my active customers? Because here, get this, Ricky, 25% of my referrals come from my active customers. How do I market to them? How do I market to my team so that they're enrolled in everything? My assistants, my staff, and then the sixth system that I believe everyone needs in place is an emotional state management system, okay? For so many years, how I dealt with the stress, the fear, the anxiety, the worry, the doubt, put in the comments if any of you guys deal with this in your business. I dealt with it by smoking a joint, by drinking alcohol, by eating shitty food. That's how I dealt with it. So you need an emotional state management system because what's the purpose of being in business? It's not about being stressed. It's not about being angry. It's not about being upset or full of doubt. It's about being full of joy and excitement and gratitude and peace and tranquility. But we've got to manage our state to get there. So at this level, this is where you really crystallize these six systems. So what I liked was the 30 minute to yourself per day deal. When, tell me more about that. Because I do that, like of course I get up, I work at 4.30, I go to the gym at 6. But when I get to the office, I literally take 30 minutes to like have a meeting with myself. I think that's what you said. It's exactly what I do. Every single day I have a meeting with myself, with my book about what's most important in my life and my business and everything going on. I make a new list of what's going on today and the most important activities I need to get done today. And that's how I start every day when I get to the office. So tell me more about your philosophy there. Right, let me ask you a question. And you guys answer this in the comments. What do most people think time equals what? Fill in the blank, Ricky. What do most people say time equals? Most people say money. Right, most people say time equals money. I actually believe time equals emotion. So I break my day up into three major routines. A morning routine, a daytime routine and an evening routine. And this is what we teach in and we're gonna be teaching at the event, okay? So inside of these routines, I have powerful rituals. One of those rituals for me in my morning routine is to do what's called a smart day. A smart day is a 30 minute meeting where I look at what are all, with all the shit that I think I gotta get done. So I do a brain dump on a piece of paper and I get my list together, sort of speak, okay? But then I ask myself, well, what are the outcomes I wanna create for today attached to different emotions? For example, when I get to my daytime routine, the emotion I want is absolute fucking certainty that I'm gonna drive business into my business, money into my business. I want that fucking energy. I want that, I am a fucking gladiator. This is my business, my show, my reality. But when I start my morning routine, I don't want that fucking energy. I want peace and tranquility that just fucking I can breathe. You see what I'm saying? So I find out what emotions I want to different parts of my day and I look at these to-do lists. We all have it. And what I wanna do is I wanna set myself up that I get accomplished throughout the day, not that I feel like I didn't get shit done throughout the day. So I'll do what's called, I'll bundle the clump or I'll clump the dump, right? So I'll dump everything on paper and I'll move it into different clumps. So some of the things will be like, today, for example, was a swim day and drink my green smoothie and do an ab workout at the gym and also drink my 120 ounces of water. So those are kind of four different to-dos that go into one clump. You can kind of see it. It goes into health and vitality. Some of the other ones, like, for example, be a gladiator that gets massive results in my business. So these were a couple of things I had. Do my follow-up phone calls, have a podcast with Ricky, do my coaching call with German and Mickey that are people in my team and my organization, do my inventory meeting, and then record my listing mastery program, which we're recording piece of that to one of our programs, right? So those are five actual items that if I fucking do them, it creates this outcome of being a business gladiator that gets massive results in my life from my business. You see what I'm saying? So I'll create no more than three to five outcomes a day and I keep it at about five action items for each outcome and then I just get to fucking work doing the most important action item and go to it. I have the same exact routine, getting everything done, clumping it up, figuring out where I need to be, the different emotions, and then just doing it. So I like that a lot. Okay, so here we are, dude. We're level four. We're making $500,000 a year. We have mastered and taken control of our life in terms of our debt to income ratio, our emotions. We have a nice routine. We're living tranquility. We've got the action that we're taking. We have family life. We're living a very balanced life here, but we wanna take it up a notch. We wanna go level five, so we do this. And level five is just a marker, guys, because here's where you can really accelerate your leverage, okay? What I mean by that is, maybe you wanna become an influencer like Ricky. Maybe you wanna spend more time doing real estate investing. Maybe you just wanna spend more time being a dad and being with your kids or you wanna spend more time. You wanna leverage and not have to work six days a week or five days a week. I'll give you an example. I have my kids 50 to 60% of the time, so I'm working three and a half, maybe four days a week at most, okay? And now I've been able to leverage myself. So level five is where you become the owner instead of the operator. You're not doing every fucking thing to drive in revenue. So today it's more important to me that I build relationships with Ricky and Danny and Joshua and other people, because I'm putting together an event that we're gonna have 500 people there. So that takes time to do this podcast. That takes time to fly out to Los Angeles and meet with Danny for a couple of hours. That takes time to sit down with Brian Castella and plan some things out. You're getting me? So I've changed my focus as the leader, which means I tend to trust in my team more with what I'm doing. I believe at this point with what we teach is 80% of your real estate production is now gonna come leveraged out, whereas 20% might come from you, but you're focusing on other types of production for the business. It might be putting together a speaking event in Brazil. It might be putting together your Instagram now. This is where you really wanna accelerate your content creation as well with a message behind it. For example, zero to diamond has a message behind it and you're accelerating its growth by getting in front of more people, by tapping into more audiences, by creating more content and more value for people. This is the level that you wanna do it at is level five. So for those of you guys who wanna be influencers, don't get really heavy into this till you're probably about a level five. Yeah, because then you actually have credibility that you've done something worth bringing to the conversation actually become an influencer, right? Exactly, right. Yeah, I mean, that's the problem with most influencers is they haven't done anything yet or they've been in the business for a year or two. They don't realize it takes a decade or two to actually get to the point where you've built a business that people want to have. It takes time to build these things. You can start from scratch and become an influencer but you know, I mean, you know Caleb Maddox? I don't. He's a 17 year old influencer. He's incredible dude. He started when he was eight doing YouTube videos. He now looking back, he's written nine books. He has a publishing company. He started a kid self-development program. Yeah, I've seen his stuff. I've seen him, I don't know him but I know I've heard of him. He's 17 years old, okay? He hasn't had all the time in the world to do the things. So, you know, I'm not sitting here saying that you can't do it but Caleb has written nine books by the time he's 17. He has done things in his life that people can look back at. He has spoke at events with 10,000 people. Like he has done things. So like to be an influencer, you have to have some kind of credibility that you've done something, right? That people want, that people want to do those same kind of things because that's the whole thing about being a mentor because the influencers in some form or fashion is also, I guess in the same words, kind of a mentor of somebody that is doing something that you want to do. And if you've never done anything that people want to do because you started trying to be an influencer too early, it's hard to really get a lot of momentum and a lot of traction. So what Colton's trying to say is that if you want to go that route, you have to wait till you're a level five to where you've leveraged your business. See, my business is leveraged because I have my title company in place. I have my lender in place. I have my assistant in place. I have all my loyal clients that are getting my weekly email that are gonna come back to me, year after year, send me referrals of referrals over referrals. And it's all leveraged with a simple email every week. And through my team, which is not a real estate agent team, it is my assistant, my title company, my lender, my contractors, my inspectors, like all the people that form my team for a full package real estate agent. You know, like I don't have a real estate team. I'm a single agent. However, you have to look at all the aspects of real estate and know that you have to put these pillars in place. Like the lender I work with, I've been working with them and the title company for over a decade. The same ones for over a decade. They're incredible people. I'll never work with anybody else. My broker that I have, like he is the man I've been with him for over a decade, or almost a decade now. There's nobody else I would ever work for. So like, when you think team, real estate team, it's not always real estate agents. You have to have the other parts of the business, other pillars of your business in place as well. Right, like I look at my team, I have only two senior agents on my team and they go out and do their own deals. I have a junior agent that pretty much is a gopher, runs around and prospects and is learning to become a senior agent. I have my social media, my video editor guy, right? Like I didn't hear you mention yours on your team. Like how do you fucking get your videos up and your Instagram now, right? Like you're not doing all of that. You have someone you've leveraged it out. I have my personal assistant, right? That will run and get me a freaking vegan crepe when I'm hungry. That will go over and fix my daughter's iPad when I need that shit taken care of. You know what I mean? I have my house cleaner that's cleaning my house today while I'm not there. I have a Marisi that goes and takes care of my life. Like it's about building a team that takes care of the stuff that keeps your life operating so you can focus on what you're great at, what you are doing. And so when we look at becoming an influencer which is really that level five, then we have to take a step back. Well, is it a message coming from my heart and I really want to make a difference and I really want to love and serve people or is it a message coming from my ego? Like I just want to get a hundred thousand dollars. I just, I want people to know is I need that significance. And so we have to really grow what I teach is I want it to come from a space of love and service and appreciation, not from a space of ego. Cool. Well, man, I'm gonna almost leave it there. Let me see if I have any questions real quick from anybody and then we'll talk about it. Let's see. Yeah, awesome. What's that? I did see some questions on there but it was hard to scroll through them all. The anime says level five sounds like black diamond. Is that correct? So I don't know if you realize but I made levels in my zero to diamond program. Gem is like if you completed the 90 day action plan and the online course, then I have a call with you to promote you to Gem if you're ready. And then six months in, you're an emerald, a year, you're a ruby, I have calls all the way. See when you complete 90 days and you actually do it and you complete the online program and then I have a call with you and I realize that you really did it and that you're really behind this long term and you're putting the work in. That gives me permission to spend more time with that person to help them get to diamond which is a million dollars a year. Right. And so like I put this together to kind of separate the people who are just talking about being a diamond and actually are putting in the work to be a diamond. And so then it goes to all the different things sapphire, blue sapphire, all that stuff. She's doing black diamond. Yes, black diamond is level five. That's 750,000 a year. Black diamond or diamond too would be a level five. Let's see. Somebody wants to know if you actually came up with these levels or did you read these out of a book? Like I created them. I mean, all I did was organize the data that's already out there. Right. And it was trial and error, right? Like I had to make some mistakes along the way. I don't know if you've made any, Ricky. No, no, no, no. It's been perfect. So this Christopher wants to know so you max out your annual deals before you really need an assistant, he's asking. Correct, correct. Yeah, you need to max yourself out. Ruby, until you've done 20 deals yourself, you're not very proficient with running through things. So, okay, okay. So everybody sees a sign behind me. Get 1% better every day. All right, so I was kind of doing that as a little test because here is the old sign. How do you work? What can you get? So everybody comment below right now and tell me which one you like better. Get 1% better every day. How do you work like here you get? 1% better, how do you work? Let me know what you think about that. Dude, I like the 1% better every day personally. I'll put my vote on that. Well, I do too. That's why I got it. I wanted to make a change. And that's something that I live by, man, is getting 1% better. Man, it's like in my blood, man. That is, I don't know. Like I'll get fired up here talking about this, dude. Right. Well, here's what's happening. I think you're going to learn a lot the next 12 months because I know you've got a baby on the way, which is a whole other thing, right? So we talk about hard work. Hard work's not always, it has to do with our business. Hard work has to do with our relationships. It has to do with our health. It has to do with our finances. It has to do with our emotional state. And too often people use business to avoid these other areas. And you're just like in a great space, Ricky, by the way, to be a dad right now. As long as you don't stay addicted to work, right? Like as long as you don't keep hustling because you're going to have this new baby. And I think that's what a lot of people want, is they go to work so that they can have more time with their family, have more presence with their people. But how many of you guys are level three agents or less? You go home to the dinner table and you can't even be focused with your wife or your kids because your brain's running on deals. Your brain's, you're grabbing your phone all the time. You know what I'm saying? And so you got to really start to make adjustments at the different levels that you're at. It's about being here in this moment, being super present and just enjoying where you're at. Where you're at is exactly where you're supposed to be. Don't compare yourself to Ricky, to me, to Brian, to Josh, to Danny, to anyone. Just be where you're at. You got to be happy with where you are right this second, knowing that you're putting the work in to get better until like go where you want to go. Cause like you're not, you're just not going to go from level one to level five overnight. Like you got to be happy the fact that you're in the level one, moving towards the two. Like, and you know what's going to take a year. Like you need to be happy with that, that you're progressing, not because you're not where you want to be. Too many people are unhappy cause they're not where they want to be yet. And then when they get where they want to be, they realize, wait a minute, that wasn't what made me, this isn't as great as I thought it was going to be. So now I want more. And so now I'm unhappy until I get up to this other higher level, which they get to and they're not happy cause it's not what they thought it was going to be. And the cycle continues. So be happy with where you are, knowing that you're putting in the work and taking the actions to get where you want to be. And that's what makes me happy every day, man. That one percent, bro, I'm telling you, it's all about that one percent. As far as me being addicted to life and having a baby on the way, I'm addicted to work. So I said that in reverse. I'm actually addicted to life. Like addicted to all of that. Like to me, it's not like with a family work. Like it's not like separated. It's all the same stuff, man. I'm just like happy living and like to help people. You know what I'm saying? And like make a better life for anybody that I'm around. And the key word is this, patient, right? Like you got to be patient with where you guys are in the process because to be where myself or Ricky is overnight is not going to happen. I mean, how many years have you been putting in the work, Ricky? This is 17 in real estate. I mean, I've been working a lot longer than that, bro. I grew up roofing houses, okay? Right, but 17 years in this business, what an overnight success you are. Oh yeah, dude. It's not gonna happen like since yesterday. That's what a lot of people think, to be honest with you. They're like, oh, you know, I wanna do 100 deals a year. And then they start following my program. And then they see that they're not gonna hit 100 deals in their first year. And they're like, what's the problem here, Ricky? You know, I'm following your program. You're doing 100 deals. What, you know, your stuff doesn't work. And the first thing I say is like, okay, cool. It's free, number one. So, but number two, it doesn't happen overnight. You know what I mean? And like I posted on Instagram today, it said, talk to me after 17 years and 100,000 phone calls. That's what the quote says in the picture, because a lot of people don't realize. Dude, I wanna talk about this event real quick before we go. There's a link in the description if you guys are just tuning in. We're doing, me and Colton are doing an event. Colton is doing it. I am speaking at it along with Joshua Smith, Danny Morrell, Brian Casella, Chasing J. Miles, Colton. We're putting this thing together. And it's gonna be an incredible two day event in Dallas in September. It's the weekend of the 21st. Yeah, so it's gonna be September 19th. That night is gonna be the VIP night. So we're gonna have a super cool atmosphere where we're gonna be able to meet with like a hundred of us on a rooftop bar there in Dallas. It's gonna be freaking epic. And then it's gonna go all day on the 20th and on the 21st, that Friday and Saturday. And when I say all day, I mean like we're going all in fully immersive with speakers like you, Danny, Josh, myself, Brian, Chasing, we're gonna have panels with Nick Goode. His team's doing 200 deals a year. We're gonna have a female panel that we're putting together there. We're gonna have a breakout session with all the speakers as well one night. So it's like, it's gonna be fully immersed on growing your business to the next level. No matter what level you're at. Here's one thing I want you guys to understand. 10% of your success is gonna be a skill set and strategy and how to. We're gonna do a lot of that at this event. 90% is emotional and psychological. We're gonna be doing a lot of that at this event. In fact, one of the people that I'm bringing in as a friend of mine, she owns a company called Pause Breathwork. It's actually, we're gonna do a breathwork session at the event one of the nights where you're gonna learn how to process stress and anxiety and fear and doubt and worry. And Ricky, I don't know if you've ever had to deal with that. I know that was a big piece of my success where I could just never find fulfillment along the way. I always tell people I was financially free by 31, miserable by 32. I could just never find that happy space. So one of the, I'm bringing Samantha in and we're gonna give you guys a tool and a technique that you can use every single day of your life in order to have more peace and more tranquility and more excitement and this addiction to life that Ricky has. Like that is one of my favorite things of this whole podcast today is he's addicted to life. We want you guys to get addicted to life. It's not about the money. It's not about the success. It's not about anything more than just being fulfilled and loving this entire experience that you're going through. When you put the work in to make the find the success and start to build a momentum and like you find that happy place where you don't have to nest like you're not worried about the money as much as just living the life you wanna live and helping people and realizing that that's what's gonna make you more money. That's what I want for everybody. Like that's what I want. I want you to get to the level where like you're making enough money to pay the bills but you realize something even bigger. You realize that you're on this path to where you're gonna help and empower so many people and that is gonna put you in such a wealthier spot where you don't have to worry even more, right? So I want, I'm actually like on this newer mission, dude, because there's so many people worrying about stuff that doesn't even matter and never gonna happen. And I think like worry is something that's really killing a lot of us. And I think that that's something I wanna really push to at this event. You know, it's less worry. Yeah, that's one of the major things while I'm bringing Samantha in. So I saw someone asked what the price is. We don't have pricing yet for the event. That's why you need to get on the waiting list. We're gonna be launching tickets the middle of June when I get back from an event in Florida. We'll be launching those here in a couple of weeks. So you need to be on that list because it's people that are in Ricky's community, my community, Brian's community. We're gonna be launching it to them first. There's gonna be general admission for sure and there's gonna be VIP seating. I do know where we are hosting the event. For those of you guys know about the NBA 2K league, Dallas Mavericks have a venue there called the MABS Gaming Hub. Brand new facility, state of the art. It's freaking phenomenal. That's where we're planning on doing the event. We have to finalize that contract still. That's why we can't launch the tickets yet. We need to finalize a couple of things before we can put the tickets on sale here in a couple of weeks. So get on that list. This is why I love Danny coming as well. Danny has shifted and he'll tell you, he built his entire business. It's like $40 million your business from a state of fear and ego. But now he's shifted it coming from this space like you're talking about, about love and about service and just really giving back to people. I think that's the two things about this event that gets me most excited. Everyone is really there to serve people, but we're all kind of this, what you call new age, kind of like we're stuck in the middle of old school and new school. We don't really have a space and no one else is fucking doing it like this. And it's just a cool place to put this together. Right, I want to give a big shout out to Jana May who says she has survived cancer and she's very addicted to life. So I want to give a big shout out to you. Also Christopher asked about two days. Yes, it will be a two day event. We'll have a VIP night that Thursday and then that Friday and Saturday will be all day. So it will be a two day event. Also, just a quick question about the levels real quick. Your opinion of when you should create an LLC for yourself? Immediately. Level one. Yep, immediately because one of the things you're going to learn is you go through is tax-free wealth, okay? And I can't go through all this right now but if you're a sole proprietor, you're the second highest tax individual in the United States of America. One of the ways to create financial freedom is by running it as an entity and filing as an S-Corp. Now I'm not a tax person but I'm pretty fucking smart with this. And so you need to get that one done immediately. I totally agree. Cool man, anything else you want to say? Any last minute words? People, you know, somewhere where you want for people to follow you, so on and so forth? Yes, you can follow me on Instagram, the WGR. You guys search me, the WGR you're going to find me. Go follow me on Instagram. That's where a lot of our best content is going out right now. You can check out my free Facebook group as well, the WGR Academy, where we have maps in there that go over the five levels. If you guys want to check those out. Cool, so you guys heard it right there. Colton, thank you so much. I'm looking forward to coming down there in September and blowing the roof off that place, man. It's not even going to exist when I get through it there, bro. It's going to be totally different right now. It's going to be just a little poof of smoke. I can't wait, man. I'm excited to see you there. We're going to crush it. All right guys, thank you guys so much for watching. We'll talk to you later. We'll see you in the next video. Peace.