 What's up, everybody? Ricky Karuth here. So today I'm literally trying to figure out and make a decision on if I should start a real estate team or not. I would love to hear what you think. So shoot me a comment below and let me know if you think I should start a real estate team at this point in my career and why. And for those of you don't know, I'm 17 years in the business. I've been selling over 100 properties a year as a single agent since 2014. I have zero buyer's agents. I go to every showing, every closing, every listing appointment. I do all of this myself. I do have one assistant, but I have zero agents helping me with all of this business. So let me know what you think. I'm gonna let you know what I think here in a minute, but before I get into that, I wanna make a couple of announcements. Tomorrow I'm headed to Dallas for the WGR Summit. This is gonna be a two-day event. Tomorrow night is the VIP night. It's gonna be an incredible event if you're not going and you're anywhere in the Dallas area or you can get to Dallas. I'm gonna put a link below to get tickets. I'm telling you this is gonna be a life-changing event. I will be there till Saturday, so I'm not gonna be posting any YouTube videos for the rest of the week, but I'm gonna post a podcast every day for the rest of the week. And these podcasts are not going to be YouTube videos that I've turned into podcasts. These are gonna be unique to my podcast. So I'm gonna put links to my podcast below there. So link up there. These are gonna be really, really incredibly high-value podcasts. And I would appreciate it if you give me a five-star review on Apple podcasts. That's if and only if you're finding massive value in the podcast. And since I'm not gonna be posting any YouTube videos for the rest of the week, I'm also gonna link my five favorite YouTube videos that I've made. So in today's description, I've got a link to the WGR Summit tickets. I've got a link to my podcast on Apple and SoundCloud. I'm also on all the other podcast platforms. And I'm also gonna link my five favorite YouTube videos that I've made over the last three years since I started YouTube. So enjoy all that content for the rest of the week. I'll be back on schedule next week with my YouTube videos every single day. Now let's finish this discussion about should Ricky start a real estate team? I really wanna know what you guys think. I wanna know the reasons behind it. I can't wait to read all your comments about this. But let me just kinda break it down to you here exactly how I feel about the situation. About seven years ago, I tried to do a team. And I realized in that moment how much I really loved sales. Sales are what gets my blood pumping. It's in my soul. I'm just a salesman. So I actually love being a single agent. I have no desire whatsoever to start a team to build a team to create a team and deal with all that. I don't wanna manage agents. I would rather make YouTube videos, Instagram content, podcasts, go speak in different places than build a team. I would rather keep my real estate business as a single agent and focus completely 100% of my energy there on my clients instead of trying to manage agents. And then I'll spend the rest of my time coaching, making YouTube videos, and all the other stuff that I do outside of real estate, sales in the coaching world. Now, the fact is this, I'm making a million dollars a year as a single agent. And I still have time every single day to answer every single one of your DMs and all of your questions that you're asking me. I still have time to answer all of them. And so what I have to think about is, is would I rather be less happy and make $2 million a year or would I like to be at maximum happiness, make a million dollars a year and still have time to answer every single DM? Another thing I have to think about is as I try to build a team, I'm not just gonna go from one million to two million, it's gonna be a process. And I may even lose a little bit of money in the process to get on the other side where I'm actually making it a profitable experience, a profitable venture. So I can put all that time and money and energy into trying to build a team or I can put all that money, time and energy into just helping people buy and sell property. See, I think that what the problem is is that so many people are trying to build a team so that they don't have to work anymore. They're trying to build a team so that they can sit back and just kind of let the machine make them money while they're just going on vacations and hanging out, sleeping in. I don't know what people wanna do, but it's not what I wanna do. I would rather just step up and do the work. There's many, many, many cases that you can find where if someone would have worked, even just a fraction of how they worked to try to figure out how not to work and just worked and did the work that was in front of them. See, a lot of people are too prideful. They don't feel like they should have to show property or have to work at McDonald's. And I would gladly work at McDonald's if everything just went away and, you know, I mean, I literally went and worked on an oil rig and roofed houses when the market crashed. When the market crashed, there was no downtime. When I went straight from real estate, the day I decided to quit, the next day I was on a roof. And then when I got the job on the oil rig, it wasn't like there was a month of downtime where I was just kind of doing nothing. I worked and nailed shingles all the way to the day that I went and worked on the oil rig. The very next day, I was on an oil rig. There was never any downtime between anything that I did. I've never been too prideful to do the work. And I think a lot of people are just trying to get away from the work part of it, whereas if they would just do the work part of it, they would more than likely make more money and be happier. So I think it's very interesting to think about the balance between happiness and production. I'm at a very extremely over the moon happy place in my life, professionally and personally. Of course we have the baby on the way and, you know, my wife is amazing, I love her so much. You know, everything couldn't be going better at this point. And it's because of all the work that we've put into, that I've put into real estate, that we've put into our relationship. You have to work for these things. And I think a lot of people, a lot of agents are trying to just find their way around it. They think they're smarter than the system. They think they're just gonna create this thing and it's gonna be a machine and everything's just gonna be like boom and they're too smart for their own good. But in reality, you have to find the balance between working hard and working smart. A lot of people are trying to just work smart, you know, but they don't wanna work hard. But if you combine the two and you work hard and smart and you're willing to do the things that most people aren't willing to do, like I still love to go show property. I still love to go to listing appointments, closings, inspections, negotiate deals. I still love to do those things. I would do them every day. I do them every day. So I think the fact that I'm willing to put that work in is why I'm gonna continue to succeed and my business is gonna continue to grow. When you get to the point where you don't feel like putting the work in, you don't wanna put the work in, that's when your business is gonna start to suffer. And like I said about not having any downtime between jobs, same thing should apply during market downturns or seasons when the market slows down, transitions, whatever the case may be, you should never have a moment of downtime. If the market slows down, okay, good. That means I got time to make calls tomorrow, or whatever, just stay busy. So I think I've just answered my own question. I don't think I'm gonna go after building a team at this point, but I appreciate you guys and I can't wait to read your comments about why you think I should, why you think I should continue being a single agent, whatever you say, I can't wait to read it. I'm gonna respond to every single comment, so please leave me one and let me know what you think. Enjoy the podcast this week when you're driving, working out, whatever it is that you do, there's gonna be an incredible amount of value there. And I will be answering every single DM while I'm out of town, so please keep them DMs up because that's literally the fuel that keeps me going. You guys are motivating me and I'm just so glad to be able to give just a fraction of it back to you. So as always, thank you, let me know what in the world I can do for you and let's go.