 Let's go. Thank you. Hey guys. Whitley wanted to say hello. Want to show me? Want to show me a cat? Want to show me a cat. Show me a cat. Hold it up. Go get it. Go get mommy. You want to go get her? Okay. She wanted to show you always her cat. Give it up for Whitley. Hey, I've heard a lot of incredible things today. Have you guys got a lot of value out of today? This is a strange setup. I feel like I'm right here with you. This is good. Now, good to see everybody. Glad to be back. I came and did the event with Joe right before the entire economy shut down and we were locked in our houses for what seems like forever. So I just want to shout out to Joe, all the other speakers. I thought this was really incredible. If you guys got a lot of value, make as loud of noise as you can. Now, how many people here are already following me to some extent? Okay. Well, let me try the other way. Who's not? Okay. Okay. Few people. Cool. Mom, I'm Ricky. No, today, you gave me 30 minutes to speak. So I don't have a lot of time. I really think the most value is going to be more Q&A. So what I want to do is basically tell you my thoughts on the market right this second, kind of what I feel like where we are and kind of give you some direction and some certainty because I feel like maybe for me, there's a lot of certain. This is my most favorite time in the market right this second because last year, I say last year feels weird call to 2022 last year. But last year, there was a lot of uncertainty. Right. We know what was going to happen. There was a lot of uncertainty in 2020 when the pandemic hit. There was a lot of uncertainty in 2022 as everything went to the roof. And I feel like a lot of people feel like there's a lot of uncertainty this year, but this is the year I feel like there's a lot of certainty in the market. So I want to help you guys if you feel like the market, you know, if you feel like there's uncertainty in the market, that's what I want to do. Right. So if most of everybody's been following me for a long time. So you know that I'm kind of the voice of reason in the market. I'm the voice of positivity in the market. I want people to have a better outlook on regardless of which way the market goes, you win. Because I've always said and I've always believed that real estate's a win-win no matter what. For some reason, people don't fail in real estate. Right. People quit before they start succeeding. And a lot of times it takes way longer than they expected. And it's 20 times harder than what they thought it was going to be. Okay. Does anybody disagree like when you got in the real estate business, okay, you probably had a preconceived notion that it was going to be really hard. But was it not 20 times harder than your expectations? Disappointment, frustration. Every single agent in this room in the beginning of your career went through disappointment and frustration. And almost probably a case of depression. Right. In your first year. I don't care who you are or how great of an agent you are now or if you're Ryan Sirhant or any of the great, even Beau, any of these great agents that have made so much money and sold real estate, their first year was hell. And so shout out to everybody here that has made it through that part of your career. And now you're to the, you know, every year gets easier and easier. And especially if you put the right systems and the right processes in place to actually scale your business. So the first thing I want to talk about is scaling. Because a lot of people probably in this room because average wise what you find is agents build their business up to 150, 200,000 a year and then they stay right there forever. They never really break through to the 250 to the 300 to the 500 to the million dollars a year. And they just kind of feel stuck. And so the first thing to understand about that is that what has happened is that you've basically tricked yourself into thinking that if you just worked your database that you've built over the last two or three years then you're going to continue to grow. But you're not. Unless you're adding new people into your database and meeting new people and adding people into your sphere. So your database is your sphere. We call sphere of influence people that we already know, right? Your mom, your dad, your, your, your gym teacher, the person that cuts your hair, the waiter at the restaurant. But as you get into real estate your clients become your sphere. And now it's a battle. It's a game. It's a contest. It's a challenge to see how large of a sphere you can build in your, in your market. Most people either do really well at maintaining their database, which you only maintain your business or they're really well at selling and not maintaining and just going to find another client selling, find another client selling, but nothing on the back end to retain those clients. Just think if your business and your systems was revolved around, you know, meeting new people and selling, but then having a mechanism on the back end to stay in touch with them forever, how massive your business could be over the three to five to 10 year period. And the accumulation of people within your database that know who you are, right? And I was on Kevin's podcast and then we're asking about like how do you, how do you follow up with clients, you know, in a manner where there's a good chance they're going to use you as an agent, right? And you know, stand out from all the other agents that are out here basically doing the same thing. And the answer is communication skills. When you talk to them that first time that they think, wow, this person is different. I can feel it oozing off of them how much they care about me. They weren't trying to sell me. They were trying to figure out what I'm trying to do so they can help me. But 99% of agents are just, you want to sell them? Here's the prices. Would you sell if I could get this? I don't know you at number one. And if I did, I'm not going to use you, right? I could throw a rock and hit one of you. But when you approach people in a way where you're treating them like family. See, when you get to the point where you're treating your prospects like family, now you really got something because they feel that. When I lost everything in 2008, right, it was really 2005, 6, 7, and went completely broke, homeless, sleeping in my car, eating out of people's refrigerators, sleeping on people's couches, roofing houses, working on an oil rig. When I came back in the business and took the lessons I learned from that moment, right, the two lessons were this. When I was on the oil rig, I realized that my clients were still buying and selling when I was out of the business. The clients that I represented in 2003 and 2004, they were still buying in 6, 7, and 8. They were selling bad assets and buying great assets. And I was like, bam! If I would have maintained the relationship with those clients, I would have represented them on those deals. But I wasn't in the mindset at the beginning of my career to create relationships and stay in touch with people. Why? Because I could make 10 phone calls, find somebody who wanted to make 100,000 or 200,000. Sure, I'll make 100,000 a day. Cool, sign this. I'll sell your condo. Very cold transaction. Here's my 30,000. There's your 150,000. Have a great life. I'll go make 10 more calls to make another 20,000. I don't need relationships. I can just make 10 calls and make 20 grand. 10 calls, make 20 grand. That's the market I was born into. So I didn't understand the importance until I lost everything and had to really think, okay, I'm the hardest working guy that I know. I'm the most honest, dependable person. Why did I fail? How did I lose everything? Right? So I had to really, you know, that was the greatest moment in my career, was losing everything and going back to zero because it made me kind of figure out who I was but also understand the business and understand cycles of the market. And when you understand cycles of the market and you understand what I'm saying about building, if you build a relational business, then it doesn't matter what the market does because the second thing I learned was that closings happen every single day no matter what. Forever. Because I was on the mindset that nothing was happening. Maybe there was two or three deals. But I wasn't actually looking. I'm just assuming because all my clients went away. And that's what, that's the trap we get called in. When a market shifts, you've got clients that you're working with and when whatever happened that made that market shift, it scared everybody, temporarily. But it made everybody just take a step back and say, wait a minute, let me see what's going on. That's what happened with pandemic, that's what happened with interest rates. Interest rates went up in March, what happened? A lot of buyers took a step back and they just wanted to see what was going to happen. Some of those buyers are still on the fence right now waiting to see what's going to happen. Some of those buyers have come back though, right? Let me just catch the temperature of the market here because it's different everywhere. Markets are super local, right? But let's just say since the first of the year, since it's been so close, are we seeing an uptick in buyer activity right now? Okay. Are we seeing, you know, like nothing crazy of course, but are we seeing like a lot more showings on our listings? Are we seeing any multiple offers on stuff? Okay. What have I been talking about for a year ever since interest rates started going down? We're fixing to have another surge because the thing is guys is that when we see a reduction in transactions, that's only building up demand. Demand is building. That's why when the pandemic hit and the entire economy was shut down for 45 days, we're locked under houses, all the businesses were shut down except for, you know, Walmart and a couple of the others. We're sitting in our homes and I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, wow, this reduction in transaction is going to create such a massive surge on the back end. So I put a video out. I could sit here and tell you a lot of things that I think about that I've put out online. I could name a lot of different things where I'm like, this is going to happen and it's not because I'm a, what do you call those people? Genies? Whatever. I'm not one of those people. But the fact is that I've been through these market cycles so many times, it's like the market moves in slow motion. It's like you can see what's happened in a mile away. So I want to run this scenario past you to try to calm you down just a bit and then I want to talk about the current market and then take some questions because I don't have a lot of time to talk. I could sit up here and talk for five hours straight about stuff. But basically, you know, when you look at the market right now, okay, is anybody, okay, y'all are going to lie to me. So let's just be honest with each other, right? This is the nest, right? This is the happy, this is safe. How many people are actually kind of like worried about the market? Okay, good. Good, good, there's some people worried, great. And there's other people too, I know. But think about this. John and Jason. If the market went down 50% price-wise, okay, because that's what it did in 2008, right? I'm sure no one here thinks that the market's going to crash harder than 2008, except for Patrick Beck David. Right? I still don't even believe that he actually believed that. And I wonder what he thinks now. But if the market crashed harder than 2008, okay, think about that scenario. Prices go down 50%, okay? Now what you have to think of is, oh, if the market worst case scenario happens, how do I crush it during the worst possible outcome of the market? Well, let's think about it for a second. If it goes down 50%, how easy is it going to be to sell properties at half price? Number one, that's just off the top. That's just off the top of my head. Let's go a little deeper though. What about investors that own properties? Well, they're not selling them. They're making rental money. What are they going to do? Buy more, right? What about sellers? Well, most sellers aren't going to sell if they're going to sell for half price. They're just going to continue living there. So they don't care. They're just going to write it out so the prices come back up, right? Right. If they want to upgrade, they're going to buy a house for half off. They may have to sell theirs for half off, but they're getting what they want for half off. Like, there's not a sector in the market that doesn't benefit from the worst-case scenario. So if you can wrap your head around worst-case scenarios and then worst-case scenario doesn't happen, then how good off are you? Right now, we're down what? 10%, 15% price-wise from the peak? We still ended up up on the year by the end of the year. It's like 1% or something nationally. Different markets are different. We're down from the peak, okay? But now where are we going? So just to finish off with the 2008 scenario, I got back in the business in 2008 speaking of 2008 and let me tell you something that was an amazing time to be a real estate agent. It was so easy to sell properties for half price. It was way easier than now and these buyers were ecstatic relationships. They're my fam now. Now they're going to, as the market rebounds they sell it for twice as much upgrade to something else, refer eight people to me. It's literally how it became number one in my market. Because all the foreclosure agents that didn't answer the phone I said, okay, I can play that game. I'll just go represent the buyers on your deals and when the foreclosures go away you'll go away but I'll still have the properties as my clients. I'll resell them and get referrals and I'll beat you in six years. That's how I thought. I'll beat you in six years based on what I'm doing now. That's how you guys have to think. So when you understand the philosophy that the market doesn't matter like it has zero to do with your success, your success is not predicated on anything that the market does. That's the surface level of this. That's going to get you to an average success. And now you build your business and think, nothing matters. I'm from Alabama so I can say nothing matters. But when you think of Alabama, right, what's the image you have in your mind? Like like mud you think mud you think like like water boy I'm down there like mama said alligators matter because I got all them teeth and no toothbrush. But the point is that I'm in Alabama, nothing matters. That gets you to that average success. If you want to go to the top though, this will get you to $200,000 but if you want to get to the million, if you want to get to the place where you're number one in your MLS, then you take a solid foundation that nothing can take you down. No market shift can take you down. You realize the cycles, you know what's going to happen. To take it to the next level is okay now you've got to pay attention to the market and think about okay what's the most certain outcome that could happen in the market and let me game plan around that most certain outcome and I'll put all my chips on that certain outcome and if it hits then I'll hit big. But if it doesn't hit I win anyway because nothing matters. And that's where you can start taking on your time towards building a business to take advantage of what the most certain outcome of the market is. You with me? Can I get a water boy? Okay. So you got me. Most certain outcome all chips in it doesn't matter anyway let's go. Alright let's talk about the most certain outcome in the current market. Where do I begin? So inflation. Okay. Does anybody here feel like inflation is going up right now? Yeah, y'all feel like it's going up? It's been coming down since June. Not in New York. Yeah, well it but if you look at a chart in actual facts coming down I spent half the money to come here that I would have spent just three months ago. I just went to Vegas. I spent 3500 for just plane tickets in October and I spent 2200 this trip last week. I spent 1700 to go to Orlando and I just bought tickets for 900. That's inflation. That's supply and demand. The fed rate coming up has helped consumers because now we're getting stuff cheaper. I know you guys may not be feeling it because it is local you know I need to dig more into what you're talking about here. The what? We call them and we we create our own eggs like I don't know about eggs I got my own eggs nevertheless guys let me ask you this you think by the end of the year inflation is going to be higher or lower? Okay, there we go. I got somewhere with you. The 30 year fixed the 30 year fixed is tied to inflation. Not the fed rate. It is tied to credit cards, auto loans helots. Mortgage rates are tied to inflation which is tied to the 10 year treasury. Those are all correlated very closely if you look at a chart through history incredibly correlated. So if we all agree and every guru in the world does and inflation is coming down what does that mean for mortgage rates? Coming down. They've already come down quite a bit right? They were from 7.2 to now they're 6 basically. They'll continue to come down as we get more data around inflation that is coming down and the 10 year treasury has come down. It's all going to come down. And that's what's causing this spike in buyer activity that you guys say that you're getting. Last year we had 28% increase week over week for mortgage applications. I've been putting out so much content for the past 6 months about all of this happening and the keyboard warriors are saying well if it's so great then why are we at a 12 year low for mortgage applications? I'm like bro this happens in stages man you're not going to get like more people looking online showings of mortgage applications pending deals and closings in one day this is a process people are becoming more comfortable with this situation and we're seeing it. So we feel like mortgage rates are going to come down we all kind of agree there because we feel like inflation is going to come down. Now very interesting fact every single year inventory to the moon and straight down if you look at a chart I have a chart I was denied on slides if you look at a chart of inventory every year it's like a straight up line inventory straight down straight down plummeting up down up down up down up down every single year. 2021 the year of the boom it was crazy inventory went up at the same time of year it always does straight up nobody's talking about that then it came down now it's come up and all the media says inventory through the roof but now it's dropping since August has been dropping and we're in that time of the year where it plummets and guess what we're not even half of where we were pre-pandemic and it's going to go down lower yeah every year you can look at redfin data you can look at every different entity that collects data on this MBS everybody and you'll see that inventory drops all the way through February every year and then starts rising back up it'll rise back up and then it'll go back down it's going to happen if history has anything to do with it remember what's most certain going to happen we don't know what's going to happen interest rates could shoot to the moon inflation could shoot to the moon prices could go down we don't know what's going to happen but we know this none of that matters because closing is happening every day so we have that backup plan that the market's never going to go anywhere we're always going to succeed we're going to be in the sector of the way we think the market's going to go so we can explode with it or are we just going to keep playing the surplus level game and just stay right here and stay safe the thing is when you go for it you win either way even if it doesn't work out so if inventory is coming down if interest rates are coming down we're already seeing an uptick in buyer activity we're already seeing it heat back up what do you think is going to happen another key data point formations of families which means basically people coming into their 30s right formations of families is approaching all time highs and it will continue to grow every year based on the birth rates in the 1980s it's just simple math and so the formation of families that's not people that want houses that's people that need houses this is like real demand this isn't like somebody wants to upgrade because they're tired of the layout these are real people that need houses alright so builders are down 30-40% right nationally we've got inventory dropping anyway we've got interest rates dropping going to continue to drop slower and slower buyers are already coming out it's not going to happen until spring but it's already starting to happen why? because all this demand has been building since March when everybody took a step back this is all happening right in front of us and so the way that this market is going over the next for the rest of this year now it's only going to get busier and busier and busier and we're going to have less and less to sell and all the buyers the majority of the buyers like it's heating up now it's going to get worse and guess what inventory is going to be lower and now everybody is going to be fighting over the same house that's what I see happening that's what I see happening in the market so if that's what we feel like just based on the data and based on history we feel like it will certainly happen then let's go all in and prepare for that to happen right but then what what normally happens the inventory comes up and then what comes down it's going to come down again right and where are interest rates going to be where are where's all the data points going to be at that time and so this is something you watch if you're going to be like the highest of producers and you say okay I see the little opportunity right here in the market I'm going to take advantage of this I'm going to exploit this and that's how you become the top agent in your market and I never really paid attention honestly because I was so busy just trying to build my business and so that's another testament right there for you that if you go all in on people and try to create five new relationships a day with property owners in your market create those great first impressions where they really feel like you care about them and follow that up with a weekly email this is what you guys all should be doing right here just to make it real simple for you make calls all morning social media all afternoon and do a weekly email and you're done absolutely done now who do you call whoever you want to call I don't want to cold call it's too cold I need to have the reassurance that they know at least know who I might be okay the thing is all lead generation activities it's the same thing every single one of them are geared to collect data you collect their data and then you talk to them on the phone every single lead gen activity debating if I should ask you guys I'm going to do it for fun does anybody know a lead gen activity that the purpose of it isn't just to collect data and call them on the phone anybody come on please yes yes yes you're going to go meet them shake their hand get their business card and then how are you going to follow up and then just hope they call you that does work by the way that does work but I can't wait on people to call me and initiate I have to be the most successful right now I'm not going to wait on something to happen I got to go make something happen that's good though it does work I saw two hands collect data for you then to call them that doesn't collect data for you then what's up when they call you you've got their data and you're talking to them on the phone now right back to having a conversation you've got their data talking to them on the phone correct I'm going to get to Q&A in a second I just want to take one more somebody has it that doesn't involve collecting data and talking to them on the phone yeah that's collecting data and then calling them same thing when you're volunteering you're seeing they're hoping that people are signing in or you're collecting some kind of data so they can follow up with them later right it's everything how are you doing business volunteering how do they call you what are you doing how do you go from there to somebody one more well that's why I'm trying to find something because here's the thing guys if I can find something different then I'm going to start talking about that but every single lead gen activity is designed to collect data talk to them on the phone well Zillow calls me with the buyer on the line you're talking to them on the phone we're right back to the same stuff and so the name of the game guys communication skills can you take anybody at any given time and have a conversation with them and they feel like wow this person feels like family that's the name of the game and when you get to that level you don't care who you're talking to then you're like how can I be the most efficient oh well there's a million people here I can't talk to all of them I need to talk to the most efficient people who is that the property you want to sell let me just talk to as many of those people as possible and create as many friendships as I possibly can yeah and you're going to put them in a database I'm sure right data and then you can send stuff to them like the whole advertised hoping they call is great that's what I do with the weekly email like I'm hoping my database calls me that's awesome but I'm not in the beginning at the end of your career you can live off that you've got to be initiating conversation after conversation after conversation or nothing's going to happen maybe you have a team and maybe you've hired somebody to make those calls for you awesome I don't care somebody's having conversations a couple quick little tips and then I want to take some questions since you guys are in the mood at the end of every prospecting call you guys have right now you know you have your call you're talking to them whatever it is if they want to do something great go there if it's more of a relationship building conversation we'll do something later we'll call you here's my info all that say hey before you go let me ask you this if I had a great deal on a rental property would you be interested just see what they say if they're like oh yeah what you got well I got stuff all the time what kind of properties are you interested in single family duplex multi family commercial what do you like and now get all the criteria and put them in your investor database make a list of investors these people that own these properties you guys are calling they're investors too and if you can ask that question at the very end you've got somebody else on your investor list and now you can build that list up and guess what go find them some investment properties we all need to be building our investor list up while we're selling residential I don't know what you guys sell commercial residential condos why not since you're there anyway and the and the the relationship is kind of dying for now see if you can revive it we'll see if they might be interested in a great rental property and if you had a bad conversation right it's like or this is this would be a good one if somebody is like well who is this and I don't like you and you're an one of magents it's like sir listen I'm just calling to see if you like rental properties I got I might have some good ones for you it's like wait a minute I'm trying to bring you value over here and by the way I'm not trying to get you to sell your house David right so that that's one thing I think maybe a few of you might use that that might be something useful but at the end of the day I want to cover one of three things and I'll let you guys aside and then take questions calls social media or weekly email okay calls raise your hand social media raise your hand um weekly email okay calls win alright I'm just going to cover it for like two seconds and then take some questions I don't care where you get your leads from right zero to diamond is not a cold calling program it's a communication program I don't care where you get your leads from I just want you to understand how you need to communicate with your prospects what to do with them after help you create a process to take them from prospect to closing whether it be next month or five or ten years down the road it doesn't matter so the first thing to understand about calls is that when you're talking to a prospect you shouldn't care if they want to buy or sell or not that's rule number one I'm going to get you so far because it's almost like it helps you communicate better too because there's no pressure because a lot of us when we got in the business we got in the business because we want to help people and then we listen to our coaches and our trainers and we get these scripts that's trying to get us to high pressure people into doing stuff and we're like man this is really just crazy this is wild I feel weird I feel awkward these people are hanging up on me and all this stuff and so we all go through that stage where we're just trying to close close close and then hopefully you saw a video of mine or somebody who's preaching this side of it because I wish somebody would have told me this from day one like you don't care if they buy or sell connect with them figure out what it is they want to do and then put together a game plan to help them do it that's how you build a career because those people are going to come back to you those people to you right? does everybody know my scripts? okay I don't have to go through that zero to diamond.com all free you got it I'm going to leave it with that because at the end of the day like if you can wrap your head around the mentality of how you need to think when communicating to people here's an exercise next time you're talking to your mom, dad, brother best friend from high school you know you're an agent in the office that you feel real comfortable with take a second when you're in the middle of that conversation and just subconsciously as they're talking think about how comfortable you are in that conversation how comfortable they are how relaxed you are your shoulders you're not nervous the tone of your voice how fast you're talking you know everything from A to Z and take a mental snapshot of that moment of those emotions and think that's what Ricky's talking about because if you can emulate that exact feeling when you're talking to your prospects you're ancient closer and closer to mastery of being able to communicate because when you're talking to your mom or dad that's mastery communication you feel like you can tell them anything they are listening you feel comfortable if you can get to that level with like prospects you don't know you have made it ladies and gentlemen if I haven't met you before it was nice to meet you I wish you guys nothing but the best in 2023 let me know what I can do to help you and much love thank you guys if you guys have any questions