 What's up, everybody? Ricky Kruth here. Welcome back to my channel. So I had sinus surgery last Friday, so I've been kind of under the weather. I still don't sound completely right, but I am breathing a lot better already, but it's been a little bit of recovery. That's why my voice sounds a little deeper today. Bam, bam, hush! So unless you've been living under a rock for the last week, I'm sure you've heard about this Amazon Realogy deal that they put together and what it is basically is that home buyers can go to Amazon. Amazon will pick out an agent for you. If you go through that agent and close the transaction, Amazon will come back and give you home smart devices, echos, fire sticks, ring doorbells, all kinds of stuff. And for those of you who don't know, Realogy is the parent company of Better Homes and Garden, Caldwell Bankers, Sentry21, Sotheby's, and ERA Real Estate. So the agents from those companies will start to get referrals from Amazon and their clients will get home smart devices installed in their house. The more they spend on a house, the more they'll get from Amazon. Now, this is gonna be a really fun ride to watch here. They're gonna start it in several different markets, not everywhere at once. Some of the markets include Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Washington, Atlanta. Now, Amazon has said several times they're not getting into the real estate business itself, but who knows what their true intentions are. A few things that I find really interesting with this is the fact that Realogy's stock has went down so much over the last couple years. They went from a $7 billion valuation to today's $600 million valuation. They've really taken a hit, and I believe that this Amazon deal is their attempt to try to get with a big brand to try to revive their company. Do I think it's gonna work? Only time will tell. This is something that we're gonna have to monitor as time goes on. I'm gonna be watching it really closely because I'm really interested in what direction this is going in. Is Amazon dipping their toe in the water in the real estate industry so that they can get a little deeper and a little deeper and a little deeper and get to a point where, hey, they might even start putting house listings on Amazon? Maybe, but I think the bigger picture right now for Amazon is the fact that they're getting their home devices in as many homes as possible. I think what Amazon's really looking for is more data. I think everybody's on this fight for more data. Zillow just wants more data. Amazon wants more data. Apple wants more data. Everybody just wants more data. Facebook, all of them, they're just looking for more data so that they can further their position in the market. The more data you have, the more customer relations you have, the better position you are in business. Now, my email inbox, my DMs, I've been getting tagged in posts asking me, what do I think about this Amazon thing? And what I really think about it is, is that I think that, like I said, they're on this quest for more data so they can know more about their customers so they can provide more and build an even bigger empire of the e-commerce business. And as far as what direction they're gonna take this in the real estate industry, that's yet to be determined, yet to be seen. It's gonna be really, really interesting. I feel like Amazon is doing this to get a better position in their e-commerce business and Realogy is doing this to try to revive their business. For all of those agents out there that are worried about Amazon taking over the real estate industry and just wiping out real estate agents, here's how I really feel about it. I feel like Redfin, Amazon, and a lot of these companies that are trying to wipe real estate agents out, I don't think that they can replace the one key thing that they're missing in their systems. The one key thing is real relationships. When you call Redfin, when you deal with Redfin, when you deal with some of these other companies, even big teams with real estate companies, you have like three or four people that are handling different parts of your transaction and it takes the relationship part out of the equation. Sometimes when you're calling one of these companies, just to get a couple questions answered, you'll get tossed around from person to person and it becomes very frustrating. I believe that there will always be a need, right, there will always be customers that buy and sell property that want to deal with one person that they trust, that they feel so comfortable with, that they know 100% exactly how each transaction is gonna go because they've done past transactions with that person, that agent, and they're not, they don't want to see if the grass is greener. They're comfortable with the way that it is. And I think even as the next generation, people that are teenagers right now growing up with Amazon and are in the technology world, they live in a digital world, I think even when they become 30 and 40 years old and they're buying and selling properties, I still believe even at that point that they're gonna want one person to represent them negotiating the deal, handling the deal, the whole nine yards. Now, do I think that the entire landscape of the real estate industry can completely change? Absolutely, I think that's possible, right? Anything's possible, but what I also believe possible is that if you believe in what I'm doing with treating relationships with far more value than you do the transactions and you're taking care of people, I don't think that those agents are ever gonna go anywhere. I do think that agents that are transactional based, I think that those agents have a really good chance of doing transactions by the hour for one of these companies. But if you're here to help people, if you're here to bring value to people, if you're here to work hard for people, there's always gonna be job security for that type of agent. I don't know where the industry's going, but I'm enjoying the ride, I'm enjoying the excitement of all of these new things coming at us and I'm up for the challenge. I love a challenge, I love competition and mark my words, I will stick and move with the market. I'll go wherever the market takes me, I will always be in the best position I can possibly be in because I care about people, I wanna bring value, I work hard and I'm gonna do everything I can do to help as many people as I can accomplish their goals. The great Jim Rohn said, if you help enough people get what they want, then you can have everything that you want. And I think that statement is always gonna be true, regardless of where the world moves in terms of technology, companies doing this or that, it doesn't matter. People are still here, no matter how much technology is here, people are still gonna be here making decisions on emotions and needs. Please leave your comments below, I wanna hear what you think about this, what direction you think it's going in. Let me know what in the world I can do for you and until the next video, let's go!