 I have always said that real estate is a do or die. It's always been a do or die for me. I was so focused on real estate, you know, as I was building my business that I literally didn't even know of massive things that was happening economically, socially. I was so focused on one thing. And as I got into the coaching business, helping other agents and made my entire mission statement to help reduce the failure rate in the real estate industry one agent at a time, as I came in and had that statement, it was even more of a do or die for me. And I've said this in many videos, real estate is do or die, you know, not only just for my personal business and for me personally, but when I'm coaching you and giving you advice and stuff, I want, you guys know that have been following me for a while, that I don't hold back whatsoever. I tell you exactly what I think immediately without sugarcoating anything. Why do I do that? Because this is do or die. And because if I don't tell you exactly what I feel like you need to know to go out there and absolutely crush it, then I'm not going to be able to sleep at night. That's my whole existence is making sure that you're in the very best position possible. It's why I coach for free. That's why I started doing all of this. And so this past Sunday, Kelly Williams had their family reunion in Anaheim and Gary Kellert at his state of the market, his address that he normally does. And I love the first article here, you know, the headline here. And he says, he says it's do or die. This is, it's a do or die housing market for real estate agents. He said this in his state of the housing market address on Sunday, right? And look at what I highlighted here. Chaos will force agents to become better competitors or be left behind. This is so true. This is ridiculously true. And I'm going to dive into a bunch of different things that he talked about with chat GPT, the market in general, iBuyers, agents, so on and so forth. But, you know, let's just sit on this for a second. Chaos will force you to become better competitors or get left behind. That is incredibly powerful. All right. Now, what he said about the market was this and it's absolutely 100% true. I just talked about this. I did an Instagram post just now before I went live here talking about how confusing the market is. There's so many mixed signals, right? And he says it right here. He says, I would say this is the most confusing market he's ever seen in my entire 40 year plus career in our industry. It's confusing. And it's not only confusing because you have mixed signals, normally you would expect all the signals to aim in one direction and that's not what's happening, right? It's not what's happening at all. And he's right. You know, we've got, you know, there's so many people that think this, we're going to see such a huge leg down price-wise and transaction-wise. And you've got another group that feels like things are going to improve. Then you've got it like you've got people that think we're going to have 3.9 million transactions this year. These are big organizations that, you know, that have economists behind them and a lot of money that, you know, analysts say that we're going to have 3.9 million transactions. We have people that think we're going to have 5.7 million transactions and everything in between. And you don't normally have that big of a spread on what people are forecasting. Normally, it's all pretty close. And that's what's confusing, right? You've got interest rates where we just don't know how it's going to plan out exactly with inflation and, you know, wage growth and jobs. There's a lot of uncertainty, honestly. Now, what we all do feel very certain about is that it's not going to crash and burn like 2008. I think everybody's on the same page there. Let's just say 95% of the people are on the same page that this market is not going to crash like it did in 2008. I think we can all agree with that. And the 5% that think it will crash like 2008 or worse, then we'll just have to agree to disagree. And if it happens, listen, here's the punchline. If that in fact happens, and this is coming from the fact that I went through 2008 and lost everything, we're going to be just fine. If we can make it through that ridiculous moment that was so artificially that, see, today's market is such a solid foundation of just mortgages. Let's just say, right? The average credit score is 770 versus back in the day, 670. But there are some things I feel like are artificially holding this market up a little bit that, you know, that I feel like we, in my opinion, I feel like we do drift down just a tad more. We do find a floor somewhere into the second quarter, third quarter. And we're off to the races. It's going to be, in my opinion, a very soft landing. But we'll see. Like I say, even if it crashes worse than 2008, let's get it. I welcome that market. Not because I want to see people hurt and foreclosures happen, but because I don't care what happens, I'm going to go out here and crush it. That's just the bottom line. Now, he goes on to say, he truly believes that 2023 is going to be a really tough year. It's going to be very, very hard, he says. And if you don't work hard to match the hard, all right? I just love the stuff he's saying. If you don't work hard to match the hard, your year is going to suck. I mean, here we go, man. Like it just goes on to say that it doesn't matter how hard it gets. Get out there and grow. I'm going to go crush it no matter what, right? And he says he's been through this seven times and what he noticed, this is what I want you guys to pay attention to. What he notices is there are people that don't do anything different than what they were doing during the good times. Okay? You can't do that. When times get hard, you have to ramp it up. You got to ramp it up, guys. So that's what I'm telling you right now. Go get listings to the moon. Stack your listings higher than you ever imagined. If your goal is 10 listings, make it 20 and go get it. If it's 20, make it 40. Go get it. You need inventory, right? In this low inventory environment, you need the most inventory. Don't worry about if it's going to sell or not. You can't control that. What we have to do is help our sellers do what they're trying to do. If they are unrealistic, which I'll talk about in a minute on the next video about builders, what's happening with existing homes, right? The second one, a leading indicator could be to where that market is really headed over the next six to eight months. If the seller is stubborn, let's just say, and they don't want to price it right, there ain't nothing else you can do except for price it where they want to price it. Otherwise, they're going to list it with another agent. Next thing you know, it's going to be under contract with somebody else. So stack your inventory, guys, all the way to the moon as far as you can go. Now, he goes on to talk about the market, and this is very interesting. Basically, he's talking about the last 12 months has been really rough. Why has it been really rough? Well, our market, this market down cycle has been compressed into a year, which took six years last time. We haven't hit the price levels, the downward price levels that we did back then, but in terms of the year over year, year over year transactions, year over year, all the stats, we've compressed like four to six years into one year. And that's why that one year, which is in the last 12 months, has been really different. It's been really different. It's been fun, because guess what, guys? We are all still here. We're all still here. That's the thing. We're here. We're grinding. We're still pushing. We're still trying to help people, and we see closings happening every day, so we know there's light at the end of the tunnel. We know we can build a massive business, and the people that go all in right now are going to be the agents who really build massive businesses over the next two, three, four years as the market rebounds and really, really crushes it. But he said, you may be sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, we're going back to production levels of 09 and 10 based on the numbers of transactions, but here's the gift of appreciation, right? And that the volume of business that's predicted to occur this year will be the third highest in recorded history. He says it right here. 2023 is on pace to be the third greatest year in recorded real estate history with 2.1 trillion in total market value of volume. And that's as home prices appreciation is expected to decline 1%. So listen to this. Home prices expected to go down 1%, however, 21 trillion worth of volume, which will be the third largest year ever in history. So sure, transactions are down quite a bit from 2022. Prices slide down a little bit year over year, 1% from January to December, but total volume is $21 trillion, which will be the third biggest year in history. So he's basically saying, listen, yeah, I understand that transactions are down and it's tough out there. And there's a lot of agents and transactions per agent is really low historically. The lowest it's ever been. However, for the agents that are going to get out there and understand that this is a marathon, not a sprint and that you're focused on long-term, you know, business development, relationship growth, influence in your market. You're focused on these things as opposed to, oh, I didn't sell enough properties this year. Who cares? We're building your business for two years from now. And what he's saying is, okay, as bad as it is for you guys, I've been in the business 40 years and, you know, you're crying to me when you're about to have the third best year ever in history when it comes to volume. That's what he's saying. And I love this dude for it. So, but yeah, this goes into the number of transactions per agent. NAR comes out of the great recession, added 580,000 agents when the average transactions drop from 9.8 to 6.3. So we've got 6.3 transactions, you know, sides per agent right now because of the lack of transactions and the increase of number of agents. And the historical average is 10, right? And he says, notice, notice how over time it always finds its way back to that. What he's talking about that is, is 10 sides per agent. And that's what we're going to see. And you guys saw the video I posted this morning, and it was part of my live yesterday, that I was literally, I gave this powerful message to agents that are thinking about quitting the business. Or if you know an agent thinking about quitting, please share that video because I want to encourage agents to keep going and to not quit. Because if you don't quit, if you do not quit, you will be the ones, one of the ones to survive. You will be one of the ones. Let's see. Here we go right here. Now, here we go. Headlines. We're seeing a lot of headlines of people who jumped into real estate because of COVID. Okay. They were looking for another way to make money and are realizing this is a pretty tough industry. Okay. You have to be committed. And guess what? They're going back to their day jobs. So we're going to see the number of agents go down. Okay. Now both Gary and Jay said the shrinking pool of competition leaves plenty of opportunity for, and I didn't highlight the experienced agents. I wanted to highlight this one right here, dedicated new agents. All right. The shrinking pool of competition because agents leaving the business leaves plenty of opportunity for dedicated newer agents to be successful. Now, that is powerful. Those are very powerful words right there. That's what I'm talking about right there that I'm so glad that that was in that article and that that was said because, and that so many agents are going to see that, and that I can highlight it on this video because it's so true. The shrinking pool of competition is opening up opportunity for not only experienced agents that know how to navigate these types of markets, but also the dedicated newer agents to go out there and crush it. So if you're one of the dedicated newer agents, you don't even think, you're not even thinking about quitting. That's who we're talking about. You're going to be the one to come out of this smelling like a rose. It may hurt now, but you keep grinding away. I mean, you guys saw in the video, I lost everything. I was, you know, homeless, eating out of people's refrigerators and stuff. I didn't quit. I didn't even think about quitting. I was going to keep going until I made it. I was one of the dedicated newer agents. So anyway, I wanted to share this with you. Powerful words, right? And here he goes on to talk about ChatGPT, right? So ChatGPT and iBuyers, right? So he says he didn't think flashy new artificial intelligence tools are on the verge of upending the real estate industry. And this is something, if you guys saw the video I did a couple of days ago about ChatGPT and AI, I was saying the same thing that this is just another tool that's going to make our lives easier, help us do more and less time. But nothing that's going to be, it's not like, for me, honestly, it's kind of like the metaverse NFTs. This falls into the same category. Now, let me tell you what that category is. The category is that these things aren't going anywhere. Metaverse is going to be huge. NFTs going to be huge. ChatGPT and AI going to be huge. You're going to be a massive part of our lives. No doubt. It's just very, very early. That's why you don't hear about metaverse anymore or nobody's really going into the metaverse anymore. And it just kind of went away for now. Same thing with NFTs. However, NFTs are being used. There is utility. Blockchain is happening. And all that stuff is there to stay. It's not going anywhere. It's going to become a really, really big part of our lives. However, is it going to replace real estate agents? Is it going to, you know, I mean, it's just going to make our lives easier is what it's going to do. It's like a lot of people say, okay, it's going to replace marketing people. Yeah, it could replace some marketing people. But here's the thing. Is it going to replace marketing people? Because now I'm going to go be a marketer and I'm going to use ChatGPT to be my marketer. I don't think so. What's going to happen is I'm still going to need someone to be my marketer, to use ChatGPT to figure out like, you see what I'm saying? The job isn't going to go away. It's just going to be a different job, right? And so it goes on to say these AI tools may be really valuable and really cool. And they do interesting things. Yes. But it doesn't feel like it gets it right, right? And he said he, he said, does he think it actually changed the very nature of all search? And he said he didn't think so. I think in fact it does change the nature of search. So I'll slightly disagree with him about that. But he kind of compared it to iBuyers. You know, he said, you would have thought the iBuyers two years ago were the smartest, most brilliant people in the industry. However, they're losing billions of dollars. Open Door here, Eric Wu, you know, Kelly asked him, Gary asked him in a meeting, you know, what he would do, you know, during a downturn, you know? And he said very, he gave a very sophisticated algorithmic answer that suggested the companies, the company felt like they were pretty prepared. We all know how that ended. We actually just got a report today from Open Door OfferPad, where they literally stated that they lost $24,000 per house. They lost an average of $24,000 per house. And they had a net loss of over $124 million in just the fourth quarter. That's OfferPad. That's not Open Door. Open Door, they, I believe they posted, they lost a billion dollars in the third quarter, like $939 million or something like that. And now we're entering into the downturn, where he definitely came flip houses right now with all the uncertainty. You're sitting on a pile of houses. You paid a lot more than they're worth. I wouldn't say that I felt like they were the most intelligent people on earth. And when we see the iBuyers come back, I think that's going to be another telltale sign that we've already hit the bottom and come back up a little bit because they bought too long into the overheated market. Now they're pulling back late, right? And now they're going to regroup and some of them will go away, but then they're going to wait for the market to bottom out and start to come up so that when they do buy, it's appreciating instead of depreciating. So anyway, that's my thoughts and commentary on today's video concerning Gary Keller, his remarks at the Family Reunion in Anaheim this week. Love, Gary. His book shift. I always talk about, it's one of my favorite, my top three books all time for real estate agents. It really helped me back on the crash to understand market cycles and really put things into perspective. So I want to give a big shout out to Gary and just say, hey, thank you for that. But anyway, thanks for tuning into today's video. I'm going to put another video right here for you to watch and enjoy. So I'll see you there. And in the meantime, keep selling.