 I'm the hardest working guy. I feel like I'm pretty smart. How did I lose all this? Guys, I appreciate you having me on. Dan, thanks for reaching out. Good to connect with you, and I like everything you're doing as well. A little while ago, and it's been great to see you and what you're doing, and the way you've implemented some of the Gary Vee strategy, both with your business and real estate, both coaching that you're doing, following that you're building on social media and elsewhere. But let's start with a little bit of background on you. Tell us about your real estate journey. Yeah, man. It has actually really been a journey. That's a good word for it. 2002 was the beginning. Roofed houses with my father before that. Got in real estate. I fell to history class in college. Went to two colleges in four years and decided that was not for me. Took the real estate course, which is one course to get your license. Got in real estate. Thought I was done with roofing. Worked in the office for 30 days. Didn't sell anything. Had to go back to roofing. Now I'm roofing and doing real estate, trying to figure it out. Eight months later, eight long months later, I sell property. It's my grandmother's condo. I actually sold another condo to that month. I had two closings. Actually on the same day, was my first closing. Two closings on the same day. Then from there, sold to a month for a while. Then the market blew up. This is back 2002. So 2003 and 2004 were the years where the market really exploded. I'm at Gulf Shores, Alabama, Orange Beach. We're right on the Florida state line. I'm looking at million-dollar condos out my window right now on the beach. There's white sandy beaches, palm trees. It's really one of the country's best-kept secrets, to be honest with you. We have about 6 million visitors every year. There's about 15, 16,000 populations. A really small-town beach tourist place. I love it. It's grown a lot over the last couple decades, but prices doubled in a couple years. I'm 23 at this point. Self-made millionaire. I don't know what to do with my money, so I buy a bunch of cars and houses and toys. I try to invest a lot of it, too, just to recoup some of the dumb decisions I made and acquired a lot of debt through the process. When the market crashed, I crashed. I tried to hang on. I had some cash reserve. I spent it all trying to hang on, not thinking the crash was going to be as long as it was. It finally took me completely under. I foreclosed on several things. I had nothing. I had a car somebody gave me and my cell phone. My cell phone bill was the only bill that I had on top of keeping my license active. That was literally all I had. I was sleeping on friends' couches, and I went back to roof and houses, and I eventually found a job on an oil rig. I worked there for a year. Interesting time. When I lost everything, that's when I decided I was really going to figure out why I lost everything. I wanted to really dig in. I was really curious to why. I'm the hardest working guy. I feel like I'm pretty smart. How did I lose all this? I was actually happy when this happened because I knew that I was going to learn what I did wrong, come back stronger, and never lose it again. I knew all this was going to happen. To be honest, I work harder now than I did when I was on the oil rig. At least on the oil rig, 12 hours goes by and you're done. This is 24-7 because not only am I, like you said, selling 100 properties a year as a single agent, I'm coaching 11,000 agents in a free real estate coaching program where I'm answering every single Instagram deal, every single comment, every single email, everything. I'm maintaining all that. I'm also running all my social media platforms. I'm posting every single thing. I'm commenting everything. I'm writing all the text. I'm doing all my Facebook ads, Instagram ads, YouTube ads. I'm managing all that stuff myself. It's definitely a 24-hour thing. Back to the story, I got back in after that. What I realized was that the first half of my career was all about the deal. That's what we're taught when we get into business. Something clicked at some point and I realized it's about the people, not the deal, not the money. When I realized this and I flipped it and I got laid off from the oil rig and I was forced back into real estate, but luckily enough I was already dabbling in real estate and talking to people and trying to put stuff together. I had a couple of things cooking and I ended up closing a few things there right when I got laid off. I was able to get a little momentum there with a little financial cushion, with some closings and I was off to the races. I said this is going to work this time. I put the work in. That was 2008. It took me to 2014 to actually hit a hundred deals. Imagine that around 2007 is when I actually understood it was about relationships over transactions, but then it took me another, say, six or seven years after I realized it another six or seven years of grinding to get to that hundred deals. So people think it's instant. People think it's just going to happen immediately. Even if you have the knowledge, there's two kinds of knowledge. There's the knowledge you get from listening to this podcast right now and reading books and going to seminars and watching YouTube and then there's the knowledge you get from real life experience. If you don't have both, you're not going to excel. If you don't have experience, you're not going to do anything. If you just sit around and watch and listen and all that, nothing. If you don't take action and then learn through the experiences of losing and failures and rejection, you're not going to go anywhere in life. So seven years, man, after I realized the secret to all this, and I didn't know it was like the big secret at the time. I just knew I was on to something seven more years before I hit it. So there was another little part of it in 2010 was the BP oil spill. The BP oil spill hit our area hard. It scared everybody off. It scared all the tourists off. It scared agents out of the area. Sellers were dumping their properties. And I was like, I was excited because I could use my new philosophies on this little mini recession and see if I'm right about, you know, closings happening every day, regardless of market conditions, businesses that are limited forever, you know, relationships over transactions, all the stuff I teach. And I made more money that year. I went from 100,000 in 2009 to 150 in 2010. So I went up 50% in a down year. And that was my big huge aha moment in real estate that I'm really, really, really on to something. And that's when I really just, I moved to remax at that point. And I just took off. And by 2014, I was selling 100 a year. When I got there, I'm thinking, is this real? You know, because I've been here before and I lost it all. So I'm thinking, is this real? And so, you know, I wanted to continue grinding and make sure I didn't want to, I didn't want to leave anything on the table. So 2015, I did it again, 2016. By 2016, I was thinking, I think this is real. And I started contemplating about writing a book. And I started dabbling with it. And at the end of 2016, I did a speech in Biloxi, Mississippi, the remix of it. And the people were so receptive to what I was saying that it kind of motivated me and really pushed me to finish the book. I said, I have to finish this. What I'm saying is resonating. It's going to help a lot of people. And that's what I wanted to finish the book, which is called Zero to Diamond. And the funny thing, I finished the book and then sent it to my editor. When I sent it to the editor, I was like, man, I forgot all this stuff. There was all this stuff in my, there was all this stuff, there was all this stuff in my head still. I was like, man, I left all this stuff out. So I immediately just started like, like nothing even stopped. I just kept writing. And by the time he was done editing, which only took a couple weeks or whatever, by the time he was done editing it, I literally traded him that first one for the second one. And I was like here, edit this one too. And it's called List to Last, How to Survive Every Real Estate Market Crash. And he started editing that one. So I dropped two books really quick, because I had all this stuff built up in my head. Now, I release all that information that's in here through YouTube. When I have something, some idea, and I really got to get it out, and I really just got to release it out to the public. I just make a video about it. And that's kind of how I release that now, because I haven't wrote another book. I want to write another book, but it's going to be a while, because I want to build, I want to keep, I want to keep going in the direction I'm going to really build my audience and help people. So to end the story, been selling 100 properties ever since, and just really love real estate, and just really love people, and helping people do what they want to do. And through coaching and through watching Gary V, Gary V motivated me and pushed me to actually do the coaching for free. And I was charging for it. And you know, at one point, I don't want to, I'll skip the details there, but I switched to free. And so many amazing things started to happen. So then here recently, I thought, why don't we do real estate for free, help people in real estate for free. So my newest thing was helping for self-owner for free, where I did a video about it. And then I did live calls where I was calling for self-owners to help them for free. And I got a listing. I got a listing that day, not for free. You know, the freeness is I'm going to give you the best advice to sell it. I'm going to show you how you can use flatfee.com or whatever to put it on MLS. I want to make sure you got professional pictures and the best remarks. I want to try to help you look at the comps and make sure that it's priced right and really try to help them, not hold anything back, really try to give it all to them. And then what happens, they appreciate it so much that now I'm their agent for life. And if they sell it theirself, they'll buy through me. If they decide two or three months down the road, they want to list it, they'll list with me. If they sell theirself and go away, that's okay too, because don't we all lose deals all the time? It's a numbers game, you know. So as long as your intentions are right is what I've learned at the end of the day. Your intentions are right. Everything will work out. If you're working hard and trying to contact enough people, don't get hung up on one deal. You know, that's a big problem with the industry too. Wow, there's a lot of great stuff in there. So many things to stand out.