 Right under that key philosophy. That's the key philosophy, right? Observe the diamond. If you don't know, now you know, right? Always value relationships over the money and the deal every time, okay? But what's my second most important philosophy, right? That I have tried to pound and pound and pound into your heads. It's this. Closings. A couple years, three years ago, I came down here and spoke at Lincoln's Beer Brewery to 150 agents. Who would have thought we'd come from that? All right, fast forward into today, kicking off the zero to diamond tour, my own events, downtown of the Hilton with 800 agents in the room, right? Listen guys, I'm on a mission, okay? When I leave here, I'm hitting every single city that I can hit around the globe, right? To continue on my mission, all right? My mission is this, okay? Let this engrave and know that this is the very beginning of my podcast, which is every single day. And the intro of my podcast, it says, I'm here to simply reduce the failure rates in the real estate industry, one agent at a time. But now I'm gonna start saying 800 agents at a time. So when, thank you. So when people hear me say, Ricky, you wanna reduce the failure rate in the real estate industry? They hear me say that, you know, a lot of people, especially people that don't follow me or just hear me say that, they think, okay, these are just words, right? Is this for likes, is this click bait? Or does he actually have a plan to do this, like a detailed plan? And I can tell you 100 million percent from day one, my mission has been clear, and I've had a detailed plan. Everything that I know, I just wanna give to the entire industry for nothing. Okay, that's the foundation, right? That is zero to diamond. You go there, there's the blueprint of how I built my business, okay? Which by the way, I'm on track this year to hit 100 deals for the eighth straight year as a single agent. And I'm going for a dime piece. I'm going for 10, right? And yeah, listen, there's people that sell more property than me, sure, right? Okay, but I wanna go down, selling 100 deals a year for 10 years in a row, and at least be in the conversation as one of the greatest single agents of all time, right? So that's the foundation, zero to diamond. You go there, right? You learn my philosophies, you figure out how I operate, how does he do 100 deals and all this other stuff? It's all right there. And hopefully, right? As new agents coming into the business, they can, I can get to them with zero to diamond before they get exposed to the mainstream training and coaching that's gonna charge them thousands of dollars for the exact opposite thing that they need to do. Pay me $1,000, the business is really complicated. Pay me $1,000 a month, I'll make it uncomplicated and tell you a bunch of stuff that you don't need to do. If I can get to the new agents before that happens, then I've got a shot to help them not fail. You see where my brain is? See what I'm thinking? That's the foundation. Now, what I do on a continual basis, what I do constantly is this. Regardless of where we are in the market cycle, okay? Regardless of where we are in the market cycle, I want to keep you 100% prepared. I want you to be three steps ahead of everybody else, three steps ahead of the market, three steps ahead of yourself, right? And prepare for the next market shift. Regardless of where we are in the market cycle, okay? The market is a cycle, guys. And regardless of where we are in the cycle, okay? Where we are in the cycle has nothing to do with your success. Or how many properties you're selling. Nothing to do with it. And if I can take what I've learned through being through many market cycles, right? And read the writing on the wall and say, listen, this is what I see, this is what we should be thinking about and this is what we should be doing. And every video, every podcast, every post, there's something in there that is saying, look, if you look closely and listen closely, there's something in there that you can pick up that is gonna prepare you for what's coming, regardless of what it is, because it's just a cycle. So if you can change your perspective, if you can change your perspective, you can change your life. And being in the same room with someone who has a completely different perspective can change your life in an instant. People are like, wow, I never thought about like that. That, you know, seeing it this way makes me wanna take these actions that's gonna yield this much more incredible result. So that's what I wanna do today. That's my goal today, is to change your perspective on the way that you view certain things. Your life, your career, the industry, the market. I'll tell you what I'm most proud of over the last year. I'm most proud of you guys, real estate agents and the industry as a whole. The way that I've sat here and watched real estate agents adapt through what we just went through was nothing short of amazing. It makes me so proud, so proud to be a real estate agent, to be in this industry with you guys, right? The way that you handle this was, I can't even, there's not a word to describe it. You know, I expected the experienced agents to adapt and go through this stuff, but to see agents that are one year, two year, three year, five years in the business, never seen a market shift to adapt through what we just went through and keep going like it wasn't nothing, pandemic walks in the room, you're like pandemic, what? Okay, not worried about no economic collapse, you know, market meltdown. You guys are absolutely amazing. I realize that you guys are resilient. You're not gonna give up, you're not gonna quit, you're gonna adapt through anything and nothing's gonna stop you. Another thing that we realized was resilient, okay, over the past year, the market. Over the past five years that I've been coaching, right under, always value relationships over transactions every single time, okay? Right under that key philosophy, that's the key philosophy, right? Of zero to diamond. If you don't know, now you know, right? Always value relationships over the money and the deal every time, okay? But what's my second most important philosophy, right? That I have tried to pound and pound and pound into your heads? It's this, closings happen every single day, forever. Every single day, forever. No matter what, the market does. Let me repeat, closings happen every single day. Listen to me, let it digest, okay? Just for a second. Closings happen every single day for the rest of your life, regardless of market conditions, okay? I should never hear of any of you calling me saying, Ricky, what if the market crashes? Let's look at the pandemic, okay? Because let's go back in time. Dot com crash, what happened? Closings every day, right? 9-11, what happened? Closings every day. 2008, the worst real estate crash we've ever seen. What happened? Closings every day. Pandemic, let's look at it. Now go back in time, like go back, look at your county records, look at your MLS, go back and look at it. And start to put two and two together because I'm trying to change your perspective so you take different actions, not around contracting because the market might crash. Let's go all in, right? The 45-day period of the complete shutdown mid-April to May 1st, compared to the same 45 days the year prior, 80% of the same amount of closings were happening during that time. No human-to-human contact, 80% averages across the country, 80% of the same amount of closings. Here's the scariest part of it right here. Listen to me, not only 80% of the same amount of closings, but 80% of the same amount of new pending deals. New pending deals were happening during the complete shutdown. Buyers were wearing a mask, saying it's six feet away, saying I want to write this contract, how do we do it without touching anybody? Submit it to the seller, the seller's like, okay, how do I negotiate without, title companies are figuring out the market is resilient, it's never gonna stop. They were figuring out how to put deals together and ratify contracts during a very scary time where let's face it guys, now we're on the other side of it, how scary was it in the middle of it? Was there any certainty? Did we think we would open back up May 1st and start opening up slowly? Did we know if this was gonna last three years? We didn't know anything. People are still putting properties under contract and closing deals. Think about it. Have more confidence in the market and what you do for a living. Now when you realize, when you start to put all this together, okay, when you really start to put all together you say okay, all right. He's got something here. Closings do happen every day. That should be a chain reaction to a several other key philosophies of zero to diamond. Closings happen every day, which means what? Business is unlimited for every single agent. How do you really express kind of the things that I saw and growing up in that environment and being a part of all that, coming together the way it did, but just to put it all into words, I guess when I was a teenager, started roofing houses with him, he was in his late 30s, all the way until his 40s. And I remember, we're on these almost like just a wall. Like it's so steep, it's almost like a wall. We're hanging on by a rope. Five stories in the air, wind's blowing. But all kinds of different roofs. And this guy was not only the boss man and owning the company, right? Most roofing business owners, they sit in the truck and drink coffee and watch the crew work from the AC inside their cab. This guy's on the roof, right? And not only was he on the roof, he was the hardest worker on the roof out of all the young guys and the teenagers and guys in the 20s, real fit, strong guys. He was the hardest worker on the roof, except for one person, that is a joke. I was a never, I probably worked harder than the other guys, most of them, I could never outwork him. But as I grew up, I became really competitive. I was playing sports, I was playing football and basketball and doing all this and that, I did all kinds of stuff. But the company wanted to beat him. I could never beat him, right? It's just work ethic, okay? So what did that do? His work ethic, as an example for me, made me have to work smart and hard. He didn't even know it, but he inadvertently forced me to not only be an example to work hard and use my hands, but to also use my mind. Think about that guys, if you have children, never let them outwork you. Never let them outwork you, because it's gonna drive them. Especially if they're competitive in any kind of capacity. I'll tell you a couple of things that he said growing up that I remember, specifically, he was really hung with me, you probably, I'm sure you do. One thing was, you guys might not get this one to say, but I'll explain. He told me, this really stuck with me and realized it's still today. Son, I would come to him and say, I don't like this job I have. I'm working at this concession stand or I'm serving tables or I'm doing something and I don't like this job. Son, listen to me. Never quit a job. Just add to it. Think about it for a second. Can you imagine telling your kids this, what kind of example this is? Don't quit your job son, just add to it. What was he telling me? He was saying, keep the job, look for another job until you get it and you have it locked in, then quit the job. If you wanna do both of them, keep doing both of them and look for a third one to replace one of these if it's better. Always be moving up but never go backwards. Always move up the ladder. Don't quit, don't be a quitter just cause you don't like it for whatever reason. This is about advancement in life.