 a lot of scripts and a lot of, you know, the old 1980s coaches that never even saw real estate are out there saying that we need to call them up, you know, screw the relationship, we need to say, hey, do you want to sell? Do you want it? You know, who do you know that wants to buy or sell? And it's like, you don't know me, Mr. Seller, but will you sell your house so I can make a commission? Because like, I need some money today. And if not, then get out of my way, let me know who you might know that can give me some money, you know what I'm saying? And I'm just like, you know, that's all geared around what the client can do for the agent. And what I want to do is I want to teach agents how to figure out what the agent can do for the client. And so I'm trying to reverse the entire mindset and the new agents have no idea. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome. I have a special guest for you today. Ricky Karuth is on with me. We're going to be chatting real estate a little bit at the end. We're going to discuss a little bit more about the event that we're doing together along with Danny Morrell, Colton Lindsay, Joshua Smith, Chaston Myles in September over in Dallas. But first I wanted to introduce Ricky. This is the first time we're kind of connecting via social media. So Ricky, welcome to the show. What's up, brother? Appreciate it, man. Yeah, good to see you. Yeah, man, looking good, dude. Looking good, man. I heard a lot, man. I heard you're killing it. So obviously a lot of our audience is going to be kind of, you know, shared. But for the people who don't know you, just a quick little one minute introduction so they get to know you a little bit better. Yeah, for sure. So got in real estate when I was 20. Roofed houses before that with my father grew up roofing houses. Made a million dollars by the time I'm 23. It was 2003 or four right there. And then the market crash lost everything. Bought a lot of property, over leveraged, lost it all. Didn't know what to do with money. So lost everything, went back to roofing houses, was living in my car, slept on friends' couches, went back to roofing houses, worked on an oil rig for a year. During that time in my life, I read 100 books. I was really curious of why I failed. And I felt so blessed because I was in my mid-20s and I watched people that were in their 50s and 60s going through the same exact thing. So I felt overly blessed and I knew what was going to happen. I knew I was going to figure it out, come back, bigger, better, stronger. And that's what happened in 2008. I got back in real estate. I got laid off in the oil rig, kind of forced back in. Something one of those books made me realize that the reason I failed was because I focused so much on the deal, the money, the transaction, the closing, and then something happened where just a switch flipped. And I was like, it's about people because when the market crashes, people don't go away, properties don't go away, transactions continue to happen every single day. And that's when I realized, man, I saw some clients of mine that I represented when the market was good. They were still buying and selling at the bottom when I was working on an oil rig. And I knew this because I was watching the market and tax records and stuff. And that was like an aha moment for me. So when I got back in, I just started focusing on people, not money. And that's when like the first couple of clients I realized, I was like, man, these people are like going to be lifelong friends. I said, okay, now I'm onto something. I'm going to do this across everybody I can in my market and blow up. So that's basically what happened. I've been selling 100 properties a year since 2014 as a single agent. I've been the number one remix agent in Alabama three times. And since then also a couple of years ago, I wrote a couple of books, started coaching for free, speaking all over the world, all that good stuff. That's awesome, man. So 100 homes a year since 2014. So that's five years going on six, man. That's incredible. And you're doing it as a solo agent. Explain the transition going to social media. What kind of, you know, sparked that and you need to start really putting yourself on the social media and coaching and helping people and that kind of stuff. Well, when I came back and like from 2008, when I got back in and realized that's when I really learned everything, but I didn't know that I had it. I would just, I just thought I understood, but I had to implement it for six years before I got to 100 deals. So from 2008 to 2014, you know, I slowly, you know, sold a little more, a little more each year and finally got up to 100 deals. When I got up to 100 deals, I thought, okay, is this real? Because I've done this before and lost it. So, you know, 2014, 100 deals, 15, I was like, okay, I think I got something 16. I said, okay, after three years of selling 100 properties a year, unlike some of these coaches who've been in the business a couple of years, they start coaching, you know, I not only came in, made it all, lost it, came back, made it again, but then I waited a couple of years to make sure that it was real. And then it had something that I could really share with people. And that's when I was like, okay, I need to share this because this is really special, the way that I did this. And so that's kind of, you know, and two, it's like, I want to be the best in the world at something like, so all my life, you know, I was like, I want to be the best award at football. You know, when I was a kid, I wanted to be the best guitar player, the best artist, like I tried, I did all kinds of things and won all these contests and stuff. And in football, I got up to where I had a scholarship, but, you know, like your body can't take but so many years of brutal working out and contact. So, you know, then I got into real estate, want to be the best there, lost it all. And when I was working on the oil rig, I was like, I want to be the best guy on the oil rig, you know, like I was literally planning out a career on the oil rig until I realized I could get back in real estate. But then when I conquered real estate, my local market, then I was like, man, this is just local. I can't, like this is not, I want to be worldwide. And so that's when I said, okay, this is maybe I need to write books and start speaking and stuff like that. And that's kind of what led to it is that I'm on this journey to be the best in the world at something that I can help people and empower people. And this is, this looks like this is my path to doing that. So that's kind of why I did it is just because I'm always trying to go to the next level with something. And that's big man, you know, I think a lot of people that are doing well share that like you mentioned, you always want to be the best. And I've said that to people and some people just they don't get that maybe because they weren't athletes or maybe they just haven't gotten around the right people, they don't understand that attitude. And I think for a lot of people getting into the business, especially real estate, they just kind of want to coast. They're like, Oh, if I do a couple of deals, it's okay, or they want to do it part time, they want to dip their toes in the pool, they don't want to go all in, you know. And since you're coaching now, what do you think, if you were to summarize it to like the top three things, what do you think of the top three things that's like plaguing the industry and keeping people from flipping that switch like you did to really have massive success? I think what you just said about people not really just want to put their toes in the water because they're scared to commit. And like even the people who get, you know, dive in, they ended up being scared to overwhelm theirself with business. Like everything is everything around, you know, failure in real estate and business and sales comes all the way comes back to fear. They're scared of something and they're scared of something that doesn't exist. So I think they're scared to overwhelm theirself with business. They think that the service that the customer service is going to go down if a thousand people approaches them because they put so much out there. No, put it out there, overwhelm yourself with business for a second. So you can figure out how much you can handle. See, our success is predicated on how much we can handle. And if you don't know where the tipping point is, what you can handle and what you can't handle, then you'll never reach your full potential. You have to get to your full capacity and stay there all the time for years and years and years to get to your full potential. So I think fear and not wanting to overwhelm ourself with business. You know, when we talk about the fundamentals of real estate, I think one thing that is plaguing the industry is, you know, like high pressure coaching. Like, I think, I really think the way with the future is not necessarily, you know, trying to convert, convert, convert. I think it's, let's connect first, find out what's going on, how we can help them and then convert. And it makes the conversion so much easier when we're, we're not going for the conversion so hardcore right in the beginning because a lot of, a lot of scripts and a lot of, you know, the old 1980s coaches that never even saw real estate are out there saying that we need to call them up, you know, screw the relationship. We need to say, Hey, do you want to sell? Do you want it? You know, who do you know that wants to buy or sell? And it's like, you don't know me, Mr. Seller, but will you sell your house so I can make a commission? Cause like I need some money today. And if not, then get out of my way, let me know who you might know that can give me some money. You know what I'm saying? And I'm just like, you know, that's, that, that's all geared around what the client can do for the agent. And what I want to do is I want to teach agents how to figure out what the agent can do for the client. And so I'm trying to reverse the entire mindset and the new agents have no idea they're coming in, they're getting trained this stuff and they're using it and they're thinking it's the Bible. And so when they fail eight months later, because they only sold three things and that didn't pay the bills, they don't know why. They're like, I did everything my coach told me to do, you know, I use the scripts, I made all the calls, I work hard, I care about people. Here's the disconnect in the industry. There's so many agents out there who care about their clients and work hard and are professional. They're dependable. They want the best for them. They just haven't been taught how to communicate that to their clients. When they talk to their clients, they don't sound like they're, you know, professional and, you know, looking out for them. And so that's what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to teach agents how to effectively communicate who they are as a person on the inside to their clients. So they don't have to hide who they are or feel like they have to create these awkward situations, you know, to put people in weird, you know, you know, situations where, where, and the fact is, is that prospect is never going to call you back again because you put them in this weird spot. When they wanted to buy something in two weeks, but you're trying to get them sign the line now, you know, it's like, let's listen to the clients and see another thing is every situation is different. Like all the training out there tries to put agents in a box and say, this is how you treat every single deal, every single prospect, you treat them exactly the same. This is how you follow up, you follow up after this many days, you say this, but every situation is different. So how can you say that you do the exact same method for every single client? We got to listen to our clients, figure out what they want, how, how we can help them and then develop a game plan around their needs, you know, as them as the client, you as the agent and this is what we're going to do to work together to make your, make your dreams come true. You know what I'm saying? Right. Yeah, no, I get it, man. I love it because and putting them first, I think it's something I've been talking about for a long time and people still, they don't get it because again, the old school trainers are just shoving the hard closes on them and I hear it too all the time and I try to give people some pointers and they don't want to listen. So I feel you on that. So moving forward, as far as you're getting your business, I know there's a huge craze and wave now like, Hey, you don't need a prospect. You don't need a cold call. You don't need the skills. We can just do everything on social media for you and your business. Are you still doing some of the old school approaches of making calls and going door to door? Are you fully now just like online? Are you on Facebook? What is your lead generation platform kind of look like nowadays? For real estate, it's literally hand to hand combat, dude, like voice to voice is the reason why technology hasn't and will not replace us. There has to be that voice to voice consultation. There's not been a closing without a conversation ever. I might have had one or two out of a thousand where I didn't actually talk to the client. They bought it through email. They were out of the country or something, something happened, but that percentage is so low. People have to be consulted through the ever change. The market changes by the minute and technology can't keep up with the market because there's this thing called pending sales that last 30 days and the code of ethics protects those pending prices against the public. Technology doesn't know those pending prices, but the agents do. We know it because we're in the deal. We're in the middle of it. The market changes faster than technology can keep up, to be honest with you. I don't think that's going to change because there's always going to be a process to close and there's always going to be that period of time of uncertainty of what that actual contract price is, but the agents know what it is and you can consult your clients based on the knowledge that you know, the inside information that you know. You don't have to tell them the price, but you can consult them based on what you know. Voice to voice is the key. That's how I still do my business. When I got in in 2002, I was 20 years old. There was no Facebook, Zillow, none of that stuff, but I'm still young enough to know how to use technology. My biggest thing is calling, creating relationships, and then a weekly email. Every single Wednesday since 2007 is how I built my brand. Now, I consider email social media. I mean, it's a place where I post content and create engagement. It's the same thing. I've built my brand there and I've shown consistency and dependability and hard work by creating original content every week. That's another thing. A lot of people are out there on social media with these automated posts and automated emails and stuff like that. It's not original, and the prospects and our clients and our customers and the public knows it's not original, and they're not interested in that kind of content. They want original content. Original content takes work. You have to put in work for it. That's why a lot of people don't want to do it. That's what wins is the original content, but I didn't use social media at all for my real estate business until I got into coaching. Then when I got into coaching, I said, okay, I have to do social media. That's how, because I wanted to be the best in the world. You have to use social media to do that. Then once I learned some of the things that you can do with social media, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to use this in my real estate business. I do use it a little bit in my real estate business, but I think all the people out there trying to shove social media leads and so you can build your whole business, social media. I think that you can do it. If you wanted to be a guinea pig and do a science experiment kind of thing, a social experiment, get out there. It can be done, but I think that the people that are pushing that are more so just trying to make money off agents, buy my program to help you get leads through social media. Those leads are the lowest efficient leads. It takes so many of those leads to get to a deal, but it's less up front work because you just pay some money, you get some leads. It's less up front work, but it's a lot more work in the long run because you have to follow up with so many leads to get to a deal. That isn't efficient, but everybody gravitates to that because it's less up front work. However, I would just love to just circle prospect. That's my thing. I pick a neighborhood like I pick my price point. If I want 4 to 500, 6 to 700, a million to 1.2, I pick that neighborhood, and now every single person I call is a prospect for that price and they already own the property and they're liable to sell it and buy something else. Two deals. It's just so efficient to do it that way. It's a lot more up front work. That's why people don't want to do it, but it's way more efficient and way less work in the long run. That's why I'm wearing a mat where I could do stuff like this and still sell 100 properties a year because I built my database so big, 12,000 people get my email, 2,500 open it up every week, but what's more interesting than that is the 2,500 that don't open it, that will open it in three years when they become interested. People are so concerned about open rates and engagement rates and it's like the impression meant something. They saw it in the inbox every single week for three years. They just weren't interested, but now they're interested. They're going to open it up and on their guide. Same thing with social media. They didn't like the post, but they saw it. Them seeing it means something. It means something. Yeah, that's huge, man. One thing you've been mentioning a lot these last about 15, 20 minutes is consistency and hey, it takes time. We got to do the work up front. That's the biggest backlash I get from people. It's like, well, Brian, I don't have eight months or a year to circle prospect and do that. Was there something that you did in that mean time? A lot of the new agents are going to say, I can't last six months or a year. What would you recommend they do to be able to implement this and really think long term versus just I need a deal today? I think the number one thing is to realize that this is a business and businesses lose money in the beginning. It's not a job. A lot of people, one problem with real estate and why there's so much failures because most people were brought up on a job where they clock in and then it didn't matter what they produced, they got paid the same amount, whether they produced or not produced. In real estate, you get paid on production. If you grew up getting paid by the hour and then it didn't matter what you produced, you could go there and stay on your phone for a little while. It didn't matter. You're still going to make the same amount of money. Then you try to switch your career into real estate, which you get paid for production and you go in there and you're treating it the same way and you're wondering why you don't make it. It's because there's a disconnect between how you view work and production and the dollars that you make. What was the question? What would you recommend to the newer agent who's saying, well, Ricky, I don't have time. Listen for your now business. Now business. People want to categorize different kinds of leads as though this is now business. This is future business. Everything is now business and everything's future business. People say my circle prospecting, that takes so long. I have agents that get listings their first week, closings within their first couple of months all the time. You could call somebody and they may be ready to do something right now. They may be ready to do something in eight months. If you call an expire, they may say, I want to hold off for eight months. You call it for a subowner. We want to try to sell it ourselves for a while. The Zilla lead comes in. We're just looking. We're thinking about maybe six months out. Everything could potentially be long term or could be right now. Everybody's viewing, how can I get business now? The quickest way to get a deal is to talk to the most people. You need to talk to more people that you've never talked to before, asking them what you can do to help them. You're in real estate. What can I do to help you? I'm in real estate. What can I do to help you? Listen to them about what their goals are, what they're trying to accomplish short and long term and make sure that you ask them if they have an agent they're going to work with and try to go ahead and establish this agent to client relationship. Are you their guy? Are you not their guy? Do we need to move on? Do we need to go forward with this person? Do we need to continue down this path to see where it goes? I roofed houses with my father. It took me eight months to make my first sale. Yeah, it's hard. Welcome to the club. I served tables and roofed houses for a while right there. When I lost everything, I went back to roofing houses, worked on oil rig and served tables again. You just have to do what you have to do. Brian Winters make it happen. How did he do that? We don't know. There's an it factor. He made it happen. I think people that make excuses, they're not going to make it in real estate. You have to be the kind of person that says, I'm going to do this. I'm going to make this happen. I don't know how, but every day I'm going to do the best I can do to not only make enough money to pay my bills, but also keep this real estate thing going until I do make deals, until I do game momentum, until I do figure out how to create closing. You just have to do it. That's really the bottom line. It always comes back to that, man. A couple of things you mentioned that I want to wrap up with is you mentioned a lot of people have fear and then a lot of people need to wake up and actually treat this like a business. One of the other backlashes I get and I want to toss this to you to get your thoughts is everyone that I come across, a lot of them want to avoid building their communication skills and actually making calls and prospecting. They want to say, well, this guy said, I don't have to do it. So the guru said, I can just get the leads from Instagram and Facebook. I've drilled it into the head, but what do you tell people when they say, well, Ricky, why do I need to get better at communicating? Why do I need to make calls? Why do I need to go door to door? Why do I need to talk to people? Everything is online now. There's a thing though, man, when you get a Zill lead, when you get an Instagram lead, when you get a Facebook lead, what do you have to do with that lead? You have to call them right then, right then. And so what you're doing by trying to avoid the inevitable phone calls, all you're doing is prolonging the same. You're just putting time and money because you're paying for these leads, right? You're saying that, Brian, look man, people that don't make calls, here's the problem. They know that they need to make calls to be successful. They see me making calls. They see you making calls. All the top producers are making calls. There's a correlation between top producers and phone calls. They know they need to do it, be successful. The problem is that they feel a little uncomfortable. Well, hey, I did, right? You did when you first started. Every single person did. Why shouldn't they feel uncomfortable? That's natural. But to me, it's even deeper. And if you're really looking in the mirror and say, okay, why am I trying to succeed here? Do I have a family that I'm trying to support? What's going on here? Do I want a bigger house? Do I want to travel more? Whatever it is, you're letting a little bit of uncomfortableness get in the way of between you and all the things that you want in life. To me, that is the highest form of being selfish. The highest form because your family is depending on you to be successful. All your coworkers want to see you successful. Your broker wants to see you successful. All your friends want to see you successful. Everybody wants to see you succeed, but you're not doing what you need to do to succeed because you're just a little bit uncomfortable when you make calls. And you're using that as an excuse not to make the calls and succeed. And it's really crazy to me. To me, that's kind of insane because it's like you want something, but you're not willing to just do the just tiny little bit of uncomfortableness and it's a stage. When you make calls, it's like the first stage is you're uncomfortable. The next stage is that, okay, you did it. You found out it didn't kill you. The next stage is okay. I'm getting a little bit looser now. What do I say? The next stage is okay. This is what to say. I've got a few good responses. Now, how do I say it? The next stage is let's start to learn how to read people on the phone. And you just keep moving up the ladder until you realize, wait a minute, there's only a handful of different outcomes of a phone call. They love me. They hate me. They hang up on me. They cuss out. They give me their email. They want to do a deal. They don't want to do a deal. There's only like six or seven outcomes. And once you've went through the process enough times made enough call sessions, you realize that there's only a couple outcomes. We know how to handle each different scenario. This is really easy. And 70% of people we talk to are either not going to like us or already have an agent, but there's going to be 20 to 30% of people we talk to that love us enough to do deals with us and do business with us. Now we're in the future. And that's what we're going to build off of. And it doesn't matter how good you get. You're always going to have that 70% of people who just don't want to do business with you because of whatever reason, but you got, you build off the 20 to 30% that's there. But if you don't make the calls, you get 0%. So I don't know, man. It's, it's, it's, it is a frustrating thing to see an agent who really wants to succeed, but they won't put the work in. They won't make the calls. They, they keep making excuses. So no, no, no cold calling is, is actually like, it's almost like the wave of the future and stuff. Cause like, you know, like when you get the online leads, you got to call them. So quit putting time and money between you and what you inevitably have to do anyway. And, and what you, what you're trying to set yourself up to do with the most inefficient leads out there and just squash that. Let's just go straight to the source and call the most efficient leads out there property owners. Yeah, man. That's fantastic. So two quick things and wrapping up. Ricky, obviously we're going to do the, the summit in Dallas. Is there something you want to share with the audience as far as little hints and little nuggets of what you're going to talk about or anything? Well, to be honest with you, like, I think it's really cool what we're doing. It's going to be about the five stages of a real estate agent. I think it's really awesome. We have a theme and people can come there and they can actually, you know, relate to where they are in their career and get the nuggets they need to get to the next stage where that is. And then even visualize their stuff going even higher and just networking and being around people like me and you and all the other speakers and other agents is going to be there is what's going to get people to that next level. You know, and so I think it's just I'm super excited about this event. I think it's going to be one of the best real estate events of the year. It's kind of, I think it's one of those things people might be sleeping on. If they haven't, you know, if they heard about it, they're like, I don't know about that. They're totally sleeping on it because there's going to be some really, really good value there. As far as what I'm going to talk about, I'm going to do my thing like I always do. You know, business is unlimited for everybody, completely unlimited, right? Competition does not exist. It just doesn't exist. You know, losing deals are the greatest thing, go get five more of them. You know, like, there's more business than you can handle, period. And so, I mean, when you realize all this stuff that there's no way you can lose, like everything is a win-win. There's not that nobody can tell me anything in real estate that can create a situation where you lose. You win in every scenario. So I don't know what else to say, man. Yeah, man, attitude of a winner right there. Obviously, dude, I'm going to post this on YouTube and Facebook and everything. Is there any of your social media or anything that you're doing soon that you want to shout out before we close it out? I do live training on my YouTube twice a month. I just go YouTube live and take questions and talk about different subjects. I post four times a week on YouTube. My Instagram's on fire. So I answer all my DMs. Every single Instagram DM, I spend about an hour a day answering questions on Instagram DM. So if anyone listening has any questions or wants to reach out to me about anything at all, Instagram DM is the best place for that. And that's about it. My coaching program is zero to diamond.com if anybody's interested there. And I'm just here to help people, right? So I'm not charging for anything. I literally just want to reduce the failure rate in the industry. Love it, man. All right. I'll have all those links ready. Did you want to put on Facebook later the waiting list link that you have for the event? Yeah. Yeah, I'll jump on there and put that in the comments. Cool. All right. Sounds good, brother. All right, dude. Thanks for doing this, man. This is fun. We'll do another one for sure, probably before the summit. Cool. Thank you, brother. All right, brother. See you, man.