 So this is the toughest market that I've ever seen in my life. I've been selling real estate for 19 years and this is the tightest, toughest market so far. I've been saying this for a while now. If you can make it during this market, okay, if you can survive this market cycle that we're in right now, you can make it through any market. Any other market's going to be a cakewalk to you. Think about it for a second. No seller really wants to list because there's nothing to buy. All the buyers are competing with 8 to 10 to 15 to 20 other buyers. It is really tough to get business right now, okay? The effort per deal is at an all-time high. So as tough as it is to get business, the effort per new relationship created is the same as it's always been. It's not any harder to get out there and put the work in to meet people and create relationships, build your brand, build your database, right? Base of data, you want to create your own data. Data is the new king. Why do you think all these huge companies and corporations are going after data? Because data is the new gold and all of you, you, I'm talking to you, you should be building your individual real estate business and any other business that you have around data. I did the video on Zilla buying showing time and what I thought about it and it all comes down to are you going to get out there and put the work in to build your database? But back to the market, okay? The market is crazy right now. It reminds me of 2003, right? I was in real estate in 2003 and 2004 when the market exploded. Prices doubled over that two year period. It was insanity and I was 22 years old, 23 years old, making so much money not having to build relationships or create relationships. It was a very false sense of security for me at a young age, jumping into the real estate business during that time. But this feels very similar to the beginning of that rush of that huge market surge that we had that lasted a couple of years. That's what the climate of today's market feels like. But there's several huge differences, okay? Number one, prices are already really high compared to when we were in the beginning of the market cycle back then, okay? Prices had a long way to run. Now prices are up really high at the beginning of this thing, okay? So that's very interesting. Also, it was really easy to get listings back then because since prices were so low and jumping up so quick, it was easy to find a seller that wanted to sell to make a lot of money. And for the past couple years, we've had a lot of end users buying real estate. Even investors are buying to hold. They're not buying to flip. And the people buying residential are buying to hold. They're buying to live there. They're buying it as an investment to hold it. There's really no speculation going on in the real estate market itself, which was different than back then in 2003. Tons of speculation, tons of flipping, tons of money being made, but it created a bubble. I find it so fascinating watching the market since I got in the business, the cycles that it's been through, and where it's going from here. I'm so interested in where the market's headed. I can't wait to see how this whole thing unfolds. But what I want to do to help you right now during this time is I want to share with you five ways to help you close more deals. And if you don't know already, I'm a completely free real estate coach. I've been doing this for years now and I just pour my heart out to the industry hoping to help you. I'll share with you everything I know. I'm an open book. I'll give you everything that I have. And all I ask in return is that you click the like button, comment what you think below and subscribe to my channel. So let's get into the video. I want to start out with something that really is secretive, right? Something that I've done behind the scenes, a little trick that I've done that's really helped me build inventory when I was new in the business, when I got back in the business and I've used this technique throughout my career whenever I really needed a listing or I just I really needed to ramp my business up or just get a wave of activity going on for myself and build some momentum. I know this is going to sound crazy, but I wanted to give this to you as my very first tip here. And that is hand written letter, handwritten letter, handwritten envelope. When they see that handwritten envelope with a handwritten return address, right? Everything's handwritten. They're going to open that letter. And now what do you have? You have their attention. Attention is the biggest necessity in marketing. You have to have their attention before you can market to them anything. So this handwritten envelope is going to get their attention. You're going to have an extremely high open rate. Now, what do we say in this handwritten letter? Because what we want to do is we want to have a nice letterhead with all of our stuff, okay? And then we want a blank white sheet, just a letterhead. And we're going to handwrite the note. We're going to say, dear Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so or whatever, would you consider selling your house at whatever subdivision? Question mark. Sincerely, sign your name, put a business card in there, wrap it up, handwrite the envelope. Boom! It's just one question that we're asking them. Short, sweet to the point, very personal, okay? Now let me give you a little twist to it. If you have a buyer or if another agent that you know in your office or even another company has a buyer for a specific subdivision or a certain criteria of a property, you can say this, would you consider selling your house, condo, whatever at whatever subdivision or whatever to a prospect of mine? Would you consider selling your house at whatever subdivision to a prospect of mine? Question mark. Sincerely, sign your name, business card, wrap it up, handwrite the envelope. Boom! This is a technique that has worked for me time and time and time again. It always gets the phone ringing and it's a good way to reach those people that you just can't find the phone numbers or if you have a buyer for a specific property. If you guys do this, I want to hear your messages, right? I want you to message out to me and say, Ricky, I did this one and it worked. The second thing I want to touch on today is social media. I just want to kind of bring this to your attention, right? Too many of us are using social media the wrong way. We're just posting content and waiting on things to happen or we have a company posting generic content for us and we're just waiting on stuff to happen or we have robots messaging people and we're just waiting on stuff to happen. That's not the way you need to use social media. You need to use it as a tool to actually communicate with people and create engagement and conversations. Your followers are following you but you really need to be following them. You need to engage. You need to comment. You need to message them. How are you doing today? DM every single person in your market. How are you doing today? Create some engagement. Create some back and forth. See what's going on. See what you can do to help them collect their data. Let them know. You want to stay in touch for when they decide to do something. You need to be really active on social media. Look at what I do. I post consistently. I'm always DMing you guys. I'm always back and forth. I try to respond to all the comments. You have to be active on social media. The third thing I'm just going to reiterate here is something that I always talk about and that's the foundation below the social media. And that's your weekly email guys. Your weekly email needs to be the foundation of everything that you do. Everything revolves around the weekly email and the same day of the week forever. And then the social media gets sprinkled on top of the weekly email and you need to funnel the social media back to your weekly email. If you need some help with your weekly email, I'm going to link a video below with some weekly email ideas for you. If you haven't seen it already, for you to get out there and start creating this and building your brand. The fourth thing I want to share with you today to help you close more deals is to be patient. Be patient. Listen to your clients. Find out why they want to buy or sell. Don't go into every situation just trying to get the deal done. Right? Right. Let's try to get the deal done, but let's find out why they want to do the deal so that we can know when to apply the right kind of pressure. Not even when to apply the pressure, but when to apply the right kind of pressure. So number four is I want you to be patient. I want you to listen to your clients. I want you to forget about the transaction for just a second and really listen and see what you can do to help. Once you understand why they're doing what they're doing, it's easy to figure out what the plan is going to be to help them. It's like being a doctor. You don't just walk into a doctor's office or the hospital and they just start doing surgery on you. There's pre-visits. There's x-rays. There's consultations. We got to figure out what's going on and why. Figure out what the problem is so that we can find a solution. And the only way to do that is to be patient and listen to your prospects. And number five, I'm going to bring it back to routines. We have to create a strong routine and stick with it for the long haul. Okay? The compounding effects of your efforts over time are massive if you do them consistently. So this is what I would say. Get up early. Do your working out. Eat your breakfast. Get ready for the office. Organize your day. Right? 8 to 830. Organize your day. 830. Start figuring out who we're going to call today. Right? What type of leads? What's our script? We need to do the research. Know what's going on with the market. So on and so forth. By the time nine o'clock hits, we're on the phone calling between 9 and 12 every day. 9 and 12 making calls. We eat lunch in the afternoon. We're going to do follow-up emails, text messages, and social media. We're going to pound our social medias in the evenings. All our digital stuff in the evenings are voice to voice in the mornings. If you combine voice to voice and digital, you're going to be one of the top agents in the universe. If this is your first time seeing me, if you're not familiar with my content, just browse around my channel. I've got around a thousand videos, me making live calls, phone scripts, strategies, everything under the sun, anything that you need to be successful as a real estate agent. So feel free to browse around. Be sure to click the like button, comment, and subscribe to my channel. And let me know what in the world I can do for you. I'm still answering all of my Instagram messages. We'll talk to you guys soon. Let's go!