 If you're one of the 10% that's actually going to make it in the business, then you're going to succeed at high, high levels. This is what I believe. I'm sharing that with you for nothing. Just get out there and succeed. What's up everybody? Ricky Caruth here. Welcome back to my channel. So today I want to do this video for people who are thinking about becoming a real estate agent. I want to give you the one, two, three, four, five step process to easily become a real estate agent. I've been a real estate agent since 2002. I've been the number one remax agent in Alabama several times. I've been selling 100 properties a year for the last six years straight and I'm still going. And now I'm to the point in my career where I just want to give back to the industry. So I started coaching for absolutely free. I have over 20,000 agents in my coaching program and so many success stories. And I wanted to do this video for people who are thinking about getting into real estate. Most of my content is focused around people who are already real estate agents to help them take their business to the next level. But I wanted to do this one for people before they get into real estate. One thing you should know is that the failure rate in the real estate industry is so incredibly high. They say 90% of real estate agents don't make it within the first five years of being in the business. Why is that? It's because it really is a hard business to get started in and to gain momentum. Another reason is that the classes that you take to get your license don't really teach you the real life scenarios and how to actually sell real estate, which I'm going to get into. And at the end of the day, people don't realize that being a real estate agent is being a business owner. And most people don't understand the philosophies and the work ethic that goes into actually owning your own business and what you have to do on a day in day basis and hold yourself accountable to do what you need to do to succeed. And a big part of it is that you have to get out there and meet people you've never talked to before on a very high level to get the momentum going that you need to to make the sales that you need to make to pay your bills, to continue the momentum, to get to the next level to start making more money. And then after two or three years, if you're one of the 10% that's actually going to make it in the business then you're going to succeed at high, high levels. So I'm wishing that for you. That's why I'm making this video because I want you to be one of the 10% who make it in the business. Okay, step one is to take your pre-license course. Okay, this is normally a 60-hour course that you have to take before you can take your state test to get your license. So that's going to be state specific. So what you want to do, I'll put a link in the description that you can go to and take this course online. So you click the link in the description, you pick pre-license course, you pick your state and then you get started. This is a $400 course. Now with the 60-hour course, you can get this done as quick as you want to. I've had agents that came in and blew through it in one week and I've had people where they literally drug it out for a year or two. Once you start the course, you only have a year to complete it or you have to pay the $400 again. My advice would be to sign up for the course and get done with it as soon as possible. Okay, everything in real estate, including getting your license, is stages. And what we want to do is we want to bust through each stage as quick as possible to get to the next step, next step, next step, next step. We want to move as fast as we can. This is the same mentality that's going to help you succeed in the business. You can find out where to take the state test and how to sign up for it through the company that you did your pre-license course with, or you can call your state's real estate commission. And generally, most states, it is 140 question tests, multiple choice. So 100 questions of that 140 are going to be general questions about real estate. It's going to be the same for each state. The other 40 will be state-specific about the real estate law in your specific state. Now, what I would do to prepare for this state test is take as many practice tests as possible. What I did was I took a practice test and I failed it. And then I graded it myself. I went back and looked at the ones I got wrong and tried to figure out why I got them wrong. Then I threw the answers away and took that same test over again like I never took it. Of course I passed because I already graded it once myself and I knew what all the right answers were, but I was training my brain to understand the way that they asked the questions. Then I would throw that test completely away, a new practice test. I would take it. Now, I may or may not have failed that one, but I did better than the first time I did the other practice test. I did the same thing. I graded it myself, figured I did wrong through the answers away, took the same one again. Boom, threw it away. A third one. I did this process over and over and over again until I was making an A on every single practice test on the first try. That's when you know you're ready for the state test. Now, if you fail the state test, don't worry. You can take that test as many times as you want. Okay, so go in there. You don't want to waste a bunch of money and time taking the test over and over again, of course. But if you fail the test, just know that it's not the end of the world. There are so many successful agents in my market that took that test eight to ten times. Okay, so don't worry about it. One big thing about real estate is that you're going to have moments where you feel down or frustrated or depressed even with certain things that happen. You know, maybe a best friend chose to use a different agent. Maybe you failed your state test. Whatever it is, it's okay. The top producers don't let these kind of things affect them. They keep moving forward. They just blow right past it. Okay, I failed it. Great, let's take it again. Right? I learned a little, a few lessons on failing that one. Let's apply that to the next one and let's keep going. You can only get better if you keep going. The only catch about this is if you do not pass the state test within a year from passing your pre-license course, you have to take the pre-license course all over again to start from zero. Now on to step three, as soon as you pass your state test, now we have to pick a broker. We have to pick a broker before we actually get our license. We have to have a broker that will sign for us. Your broker is the one who's going to take responsibility for you and be liable for you if you make legal mistakes. Once you pass your test, you have 90 days to find a broker. Let me give you my two cents on finding a broker really quickly. Looking for a broker, a lot of newer agents are more concerned with their commission split and this and that. I think that the most important thing in the beginning of your career is to go with a broker, go with the company that you feel will teach you the most. Somebody that you feel will really put time into you, show you the ropes and teach you the insides of real estate. Because I'm a coach and I can teach you how to build your business on a general basis, how to talk to people, what to say, how to treat them, how to follow up, how to initiate the contact, who to contact, what to say. I can teach you all of that but I can't teach you contracts of your area because every area is so different. I can't teach you the law of your state. I can't teach you a lot of the insides of the business, the local business of real estate has to be taught by a local agent or your broker. So go somewhere that you feel they will teach you the most and here's the good thing about it. If you get in there and they sold you the moon and once you get involved, you realize they're not teaching me as much as they said they were going to teach me, you can leave immediately. You're not locked into any company. You can leave. As soon as you go there, if you don't like it, you go to another company. If you go there and you're there for a year and you learn all you can learn and then you plateau and you feel like you're just not getting anywhere else and they can't really teach you anything and you don't see any, you think opportunity is more somewhere else, you can change companies. I've been with seven companies. I would learn all I could, change to another company, learn all I could, change to another company, learn all I could until I got where I'm now, which is with Remax. I've been with them for almost 10 years now and I'm here to stay. This is the best company in my opinion. They have the highest income per agent. They blow every other company in the world away in terms of income per agent and that my friend is what matters. But Remax might not be big in your market. And I'm not saying that Remax is the way to go for everybody. What I'm saying is is go where you feel is the best fit and just know that you can move at any moment. But eventually you do want to settle into a company because that is going to be your brand. Moving on to step number four to become a real estate agent is once you've passed a pre-license, you've passed your state test, you've found a broker. Step four is to put together the application with your state's real estate commission. They're going to want all the evidence that you've passed all the tests and courses. They're going to want an application signed by your broker accepting the responsibility of you. They're probably going to want your high school diploma or GED and copy of your driver's license. Every state's probably a little different. So they'll have a checklist for you. You're going to put all that together in a package and mail it off to them. Once you mail it off to them, that could take anywhere from seven to 14 days to get your license back. When you get your license back, it's going to be a temporary salesperson's license. And now most states have a 30-hour post-license course you have to take. You have six months to complete this 30-hour post-license course. Once you pass that 30-hour post-license course, they'll replace your temporary salesperson license with an associate salesperson's license, which means you are good to go. You're good to go as soon as you get your temporary salesperson's license. You can get out there and sell property, list property, talk to people about whatever you want to talk to them about in terms of real estate, and get after it and go make some money. Now from this point forward, you're going to have continuing education, which is per state in Alabama where every other year we have to put in 15 hours of continuing education. And there's some classes that are required, so that's going to be per state. But definitely look into that and know where you stand on that. You definitely don't want to let your license expire because if you let it expire too far, then you might have to start the entire process over again. So definitely keep your license active. And moving on to step number five, the final step in this process. And this is if you really want to learn how to sell real estate because everything up to this point is not going to teach you how to sell. It's going to teach you law. It's going to teach you vocabulary of real estate, stuff that you'll probably never use. What I want to do at this point is become your real estate coach for the rest of your life for absolutely free. Yes, completely free. That's at zero to diamond.com. There's a 90 day action plan. It's going to put you in position to sell 100 properties a year if that's what you aspire to do. Once you complete the 90 day action plan, me and you are going to get on a one on one call to talk about the last 90 days, what your successes were, what your failures were, what the problems were. I'm going to help you through whatever problems you're going through and try to help you get on the right track. We're going to start having coaching calls from that point forward for zero dollars. All I want to do is help you succeed at the highest level. I also wrote two books. I'll put a link in the description for that. If you want to learn more about me, my story, and everything that I've went through to get here to this point to where I'm selling 100 properties a year as a single agent and I'm able to turn around and influence the real estate industry in a positive way. I will also put some links to some other videos about real estate success that I've made that I think will really help you with your mindset and understand the philosophies behind what you need to do and how you need to be prepared mentally to tackle this real estate career that you're about to embark on and really find the most success, the quickest, the best, the easiest, the most efficient path. I'm all about efficiencies and I'm all about valuing the relationship with your clients over the transaction. If you create a bond with someone, regardless if they want to buy or sell today or not, that is now where 10 to 20 deals to you over the life of your career through repeat business referrals and referrals of referrals. This is regardless if they wanted to buy or sell or not the first day you talked to them, the first month, the first year. It doesn't matter if we create the relationship with thousands of people as many as we can and they know that we're there to help them, not just to do a deal. We will build the biggest, strongest, most effective, most dominating real estate business in your market. Okay, I hope this helps you get on the right track in terms of how to become a real estate agent, the things that you need to do and the step by step process all the way to actually selling 100 properties a year. Let me know if there's anything in the world I can do for you. If you have any questions at all, just leave me a comment or DM me on Instagram at rickykeruth. We'll see you guys on the next video. Be sure to subscribe to my channel and let's go.