 because I don't get people to buy and sell stuff. I just help them do what they're already doing, right? Look in your MLS and look at the, how many closings are happening every day in your market? Multiply times two, that's how many opportunities there are, right, every single day. You don't have to get people to do stuff. They're doing it by the truckloads. I had this natural appetite and curiosity of why I lost, why I failed. And I was so curious that I went out and read a hundred books. I read about a book a week for two years. Okay, during the, during about a two-year period, it was 2006 and seven, you know, or mid-2006 to mid-2008, it was a two-year period right through there where I was just running through books, personal development, real estate, biographies, anything I could find that I thought was interesting enough where I felt like I could find a golden nugget in there somewhere. What I realized, okay, was that the first half of my career was all about money, was all about getting contracts done, was all about getting deals done, was all about just getting the contract signed. There was no relationship. When at the end of the deal, we never, the client went that way and I went this way. And it was a two-port thing. The client wasn't looking to build a relationship with me either. They wanted to make their 200,000 off the, you know, escalated market and walk away. They weren't gonna buy it back in. They didn't need me anymore either. So it was a two-party situation. But what I realized was that was the biggest mistake that I made was not cultivating those relationships and building my database and building my personal brand. In today's world, and it's always been, because people would say, oh, well now more than ever. No, it's always been personal brand. People have always done business with a person, okay? When it comes to real estate. And building your personal brand has always been a big thing. The only difference in 10, 20 years ago and today is that there's a lot more tools in place to help you build your brand, right? And so it comes down to one word right here, okay? This is the magic word. Accumulation, right? Accumulation, okay? Think of personal branding as an accumulation of people who know who you are, right? And you've got a system in place that once you have this great first conversation and first impression, and you make this great first impression, you've got a system in place where they never forget that great first impression, okay? You're hitting them so frequently that every time they see your name, it brings back the memories with that first time they talk to you when they just loved you so much. And that's the problem you see with so many agents. They're really great communicators. They make a really great first impression, but there's not a whole lot on the back end. There's no real systems to keep that first impression going with everyone, right? And when you can have that system to build that brand on the back of the great first impressions, then you can scale. You can scale to the moon. And so then it comes down to a few things. Number one, all the lead generation sources, okay, are a funnel, okay? But the problem is agents think that the end of the funnel is a closing, or the end of the funnel is a showing, or the end of the funnel is a listing appointment. That's not the end of the funnel, okay? Those things come after the end of the funnel. The end of the funnel of any of these lead generation sources is just simply a real-life conversation, either in person or by phone. That's what the funnel needs to come to. That needs to be the result of the funnel. How many conversations can the funnel create for you? Okay? Because without the conversation, which is the nucleus of all closings, okay? Conversation, regardless if it's Facebook, Zillow, cold calling, open houses, sphere of influence, direct mail, whatever the lead generation source is, it all comes back to the same nucleus. Before there's an even a chance of closing and that's a real-life conversation. And within that real-life conversation needs to come two things, a great first impression and them feeling comfortable with you. If you can't get that, there's gonna be no closings, no showings, no listing appointments, nothing. So that's what we need to focus on. Communication and real-life conversations and letting them know that we care about them. We wanna be part of their extended family. When you give that impression, okay, now you've created this first impression that's different than most agents. Who are just trying to sell you? Just trying to get you to sell, just trying to get you to list, just trying to get you to buy, not really worried of anything else, right? How do you do it? A couple of ways. One, if you're comfortable with them, they're gonna be comfortable with you, right? Number two, asking them why, right? And the reason why I've sold so much property is because I don't get people to buy and sell stuff. I just help them do what they're already doing. This, guys, all right? When you wake up in 2024, let's say, okay? You're not gonna care how much money you made in 2022, okay? You're not. However, the amount of money you make in 2024 is gonna be predicated on how many friends you created in 2022, not how many closings you did, right? You gotta think in terms of relationships created, maintained and nurtured, not how many closings that you have. That's what's gonna build an automatic business. All right, if you wanna wake up one day where you don't have to worry about where your next deal's coming from, if you want the business of your dreams where, like me, okay? All I do is a weekly email and I'm closing 100 deals a year, 100 deals a year. Now, it took me 15 years to build that up. You can do it in three to five years. Why? Because you have automatic dialers and data at your fingertips that I didn't have when I was coming up in the business. You can do what took me 15 years in three to five years and have a business where you're just doing a weekly email posting on social media and you got so much business coming in from past kinds of referrals, you're selling 50 to 100 properties a year, right? It's not like, let's make cold calls and oh, we don't wanna make cold calls for 20 years. No, if you do it right and you accumulate these friends and you build your personal brand correctly, you only have to do it for a couple of years and you're done, okay? Don't all of you wanna be done one day and be able to step back, not only have a great passive income business through all the different opportunities EXP has to offer but also a passive business in terms of real estate. Let's keep real estate coming in too, why don't we? Guys, let's not just say, oh, it's one or the other. We're gonna do this or that. You can create a passive real estate business if you do what I'm telling you to do.