 You know, like I'm the most honest, hardworking, dependable guy. I know where, where did I go wrong here? And it wasn't just the bad investments. It was the, why can't I continue to sell real estate question? Welcome back to the Meet McKay show. Today we have Ricky in the house. He is an absolutely massive name when it comes to real estate. And I'm excited to learn what he has to share with us. Ricky was also recently a shout out with Kevin, where we, we went and looked at four different areas in real estate. I'm curious to hear Ricky's perspective on what he learned from Kevin as well as his own personal stories about how he rose to the top. So without further ado, let's get started with Ricky. Ricky, welcome. Thank you for being here. Nah, man. Thanks for having me, bro. Good to be here. We had a lot of fun when you came and chatted with us the other day and I was overhearing some of the stories and some of the things that you were telling Kevin, not only do I want to learn, but I feel like you just have so much to share with, with everybody out there in terms of getting started with real estate, how to take a business really from the bottom. Cause I heard you were in the recession of 08, how to take a business from the bottom and rise all the way to the top of where you are today. So I mean, really, it just, how did it all start for you? What was your entrepreneurial journey like? And let's just go from there. Yeah. Yeah. I won't make it a long-winded story, um, but I grew up right here, roofing houses with my father and, uh, in Alabama, really young. I was like cleaning job sites when I was eight years old. Um, I started laying shingles when I was 12. So I was kind of like brought up in this really just hard working environment, you know what I mean? And honestly, that's kind of where it all ends and begin, begins and ends. Um, I kind of have this, just don't care how hard something is. I mean, that's why when you mentioned in 2008, so I got in real, I, I went to four different colleges in two years. I failed a history class and, um, was like, I'm not going to do college. It just wasn't my thing. So, you know, I realized I could take one class and get my real estate license. And I was like bingo, you know, I could, I can do this and kind of bypass 10 years of college to be a doctor or lawyer or whatever. Um, and I was like, boom, that's a hack right there. Um, you know, that's a life hack. Like I'm all about efficiency. When I spot something that's going to improve, it's going to, you know, condense the time that I spend to get from A to B, then I'm really good at spotting those situations. So, um, it's kind of a curse and a blessing because like also the hard work kicks in. So like there's so many things in my life. Like I'm really notorious for waiting too long to, like I put too much work in in one area, which again is a blessing and a curse because just, just one example, right? Like I never built a real estate team. I did it all on my own. I waited really way too long to hire an assistant, you know, I had 30 active listings before I hired an assistant. It was a, it's a, it's a curse because it's like, okay, I could have leveraged earlier, you know, like I didn't get on social media till 2016, 17. Um, you know, I'm late to a lot of things, but it's because I'm grinding my face off on something that is working for me. Right. Um, but it's cool because as I put so much work in, I develop so much experience in whatever that niche is that by the time I do decide to jump on a nut the next bandwagon, I already have all this experience. So like when I hired my assistant too late, I knew exactly what she needed to do because I had been doing it. A lot of people hire too early and they don't really know what to tell their employee to do because they haven't done it theirself or done it enough theirself, right? So I'm very patient, hardworking. Everything kind of developed super slow for me. I mean, like for example, me and Kevin started YouTube at the same time. I've got a hundred thousand. He has two million, right? Um, everything's really slow. Uh, it's just a slow grind for me. Everything always has been and I'm okay with that because I really look so long-term that I don't really care what happens like this year next year. I'm looking at like 2028, 2030, 2040, right? Um, so that's what's very interesting to me is more of a long-term than the short term. The short term is like, okay, how can I really grind my face off in the day-to-day to like that? Like what actions am I taking today that I can really grind on that's benefiting my 2030 business? That's kind of how I look at it. But yeah, I felt too, uh, I felt a history class that took my real estate license and, um, got my license and I was 20. So that was just 2002. I got in the market blew up overnight. That was when everything went crazy before the crash. I made a lot of money really fast, started flipping houses. Go ahead. So take me from that, that fur, because you, we, we already jumped to where you're flipping houses. Take me to that first deal that you closed. What was that like? How difficult was the very first deal? Really hard. What did that feel like? Really tough. So, um, basically when I got my license, yeah, I was roofing with dad and I was like, I'm out of here, bro. Like, I'm not roofing them more. I'm out of here. I got my license. I'm done. I'm retired. So I'll go to the office and work full time for 30 days. Sell absolutely zero and I have to go back to the roof and I'm like, dad, I'm coming back. And, uh, so I, and then I was roofing and doing real estate at the same time, which as you can imagine is really tough. Cause when you're high hanging off the side of a house, you can't necessarily answer your phone or make calls or do anything related to building your real estate business. So I had to do all that after hours and on the weekends. When we weren't working on the weekends, sometimes we roofed on Saturdays and Sundays. But, um, so that was really tough, right? But like I, there was a never a moment where I was like, I'm going to give up on real estate. And that's kind of how you have to be because there's no failure in real estate. There's only giving up too soon. Anybody can make it. The problem is it takes way longer than anyone thinks and it's way harder. So when they, when they get in, they're like, oh, you know, I'm going to make so much money. I'm going to, you know, crush it and, you know, life's going to be great and all my dreams are going to come true. That's the way they feel when they get in. But then once they get in, they start to realize little by little that, wow, this is way harder than I thought. It's going to take way longer to really hit these dream like goals. And then a lot of people quit, you know, after a couple months or even six months or a year, I mean, 90% of real estate agents, 90% of people who get the real estate license quit within the first year or two, 90% right? It's a huge turnover business. But here I am roofing and, uh, doing real estate on the side, and, uh, I finally get a listing and I closed that deal, um, eight months in the business. So eight months in the business, it took me to get to my first deal. I actually closed two deals on the same day. My, my grandmother, um, uh, let me list her condo, which was cool. And then, uh, I had my own listing from, you know, prospecting. So I had two deals that both closed on the same day. I kept roofing for like another month and I picked up like another listing or two. I had like one or two under contract and a couple listings and I was like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to go for it and went full time. So as I go full time, I start selling two a month, two a month, two a month, two a month, which is great. You know, cause that's like, and what were you doing to get to the two a month? What were some of your secrets to get from zero to two a month? All I was doing bro was, you know, we didn't have social media back then, right? It didn't exist whatsoever. Neither, neither did Zillow or apps even, right? I don't think the iPhone was around at that point. I was using a flip phone. So all I really had was direct mail, phone calls, emails. Really, that was it. I mean, you could do billboards, you could do radio, you could do TV, you could do a couple of other things, but all that stuff was pretty expensive. You know, direct mail, emails and just calling property owners. So for me, like what people have to understand in real estate, right? Somebody has to be communicating with the property owners. It's somewhere in your chain. If you're, if you are the person, if you're the real estate agent and you have no team, you're not on a team, you don't have an ISA, you know, you don't have an assistant or whatever, you have to be the one making, having these conversations. If you are, you know, building house hack, right? On the ground, the boots on the ground are the agents who are talking to the property owners to then, you know, send you guys the deal. Somebody in the chain is talking to and having real conversations with property owners or nothing is going to happen whatsoever. So I realized that really early on and I realized that that was the key to all closings. I was like, okay, done. Just give me a list of every single property owner in my market. Give me their phone number. And I'm just going to go ahead and call them all. So I was a cold caller is what people want to label it as. Yeah. But I look at it as it more of like a volunteer worker. Okay. Doing community outreach to people in my market to see what it is I can do to help them. So I have a completely different spin on prospecting, scripts, strategy, handling objections, stuff like that. I'm not trying to sell anybody anything. See if they want to sell their house and all that stuff. I'm just trying to use the properties and excuse to see if I can start a conversation to get to know them, to see if I can in fact make a connection and see if there's something I can do to help them. Because they are going to buy or sell something at some point, whether it's now, later, whenever they're going to do it a hundred percent. It's just a matter of, can I make friends with this person or did a study and it was like 33% of people say that they picked their agent because they had a friend in the business with a great reputation. Everything else was less than 1%. What broker you're at online, blah, blah, blah. Everything else was 1% or less. 33% said they had a friend in the business with a great reputation. And so once you realize that it's about, okay, how many friends do I have in the market that own property that I want to sell, then it's just a race to see who can create the most friends in the market and create the largest influence of the people. Because you could spend 24, 7, 365 the rest of your life and never even scratch the surface of talking to people in your market, right? So we're coming back to conversations is the key to all closings. So we can't talk to everyone. If you want to know how I ended up sitting here working for Meet Kevin, definitely check out the courses link down below. I was a YouTube course member as well as a member of other courses, but the YouTube courses really what propelled me to get his team's attention to hire me onto his team now running the day to day as companies. So check out the links down below. They're 100% worth it. My testimony is included in that because that YouTube course is why I'm sitting here without that I would not be here. So let's be the most efficient, right? Here, here efficiency comes again. Let me, since I can't talk to everyone, target the exact people I want to do business with, which happens to be the property owners that owns the exact properties I want to sell or whatever niche I want to sell it in. And so I learned that really quickly and was like, let me just go all in here. So I did direct mail, hit him a direct mail. I hit him with phone calls, right? And then once I created those relationships and they allowed me and agreed, Hey, please stay in touch with me. I collected their emails, started building my my database of emails and doing a weekly email. I've done a weekly email every Wednesday since 2007. Literally by 2017, I was making a million a year. I was able to quit prospecting completely and continue making a million a year every year since because of the weekly email and the database that I built. And so that's like email is a social media platform. Right. When people go on social media, what do they do? They scroll, scroll, right? What do they do when they check their email? They read, they scroll to see and it's the same thing. It's the exact same thing. They check their email the same amount of times a day. They check social media. That's debatable, I guess, but somewhere in the same ballpark and then they're just scrolling. And then if something catches their eye, just like when they're scrolling on social, they stop and they click and they read. It's the same thing. So it's a place where it was. That was my social media, right? That was that was like what I used to stay in front of my database. And the cool thing is the organic reach is just out of this world. You know, I mean, you guys know on YouTube, like the organic reach is what? I mean, we have a ridiculous amount of reach. I mean, each video we make gets hundreds of thousands of impressions. No, I understand. Yeah. No, I understand. I understand that. But what is what is the percentage? Like, okay. So I did have had Kev has two million followers. I mean, two million subscribers. And then it gets what 200,000 impressions of video on average or something like that. So that's 10 percent. Yeah. And a lot of those and a lot of, well, it's great. A lot of those impressions are non-subscribers too, which is also incredible because you're opening up to new audiences. And that's that's where like with social media, like you can literally for free with a click of a button, expose yourself to new audiences every day. That's what's amazing. Like every, every little social media platform has its place. But for email, that's the place where you own the database, you control it, but you get a 90 percent organic reach, right? 90 percent of the people are going to see it in their inbox, whether they open it or not, you're going to get 90 percent impressions of the people that's in your database. Now you don't have the ability to open up to new audiences like you do on YouTube, right? So you got to do all of it is what I'm saying. But the email was where I continued to develop and deepen the relationships of people that I've already, you know, made that great first impression with, right? And it's just, I mean, so like I do everything, bro, I do, you know, all the all the podcast platforms, I have like 900 episodes out, you know, I've got 1400 videos on YouTube, you know, I've got I'm getting 200 followers a day on Instagram, you know, I've got LinkedIn, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, all that stuff, you know, and emails. Like I do it all and I think they all serve a different purpose, honestly. Yeah. So, Ballpark, how many people do you think you, like you said, since 2007, you've been doing an email list? Yeah. How many emails do you think you've accumulated over that time that every Wednesday you're sending an email list to? So it for my right, that snowball effect because you said you're you're making a middle of year almost just entirely off emails. Completely organic. I didn't like when I when I stopped prospecting, I wasn't doing any social media. I still don't do any social media from a real estate business. I don't have to get the email. See, I got have so many, you know, past clients, repeats, referrals, referrals over referrals, and it all comes from that email. It's kind of the glue that holds it all together and connected to me, right. And so those emails is what it like I create those every week. It's not a generic, you know, cookie cutter. It's me spending time like I'll do it today. Today's my day and I'll actually sit down and write out my thoughts, my opinions, what's going on with the market and really bring them value out of my brain insights on the market and kind of insight information. But in my real estate business, my database is 20,000 and 8,000 8,000 of those open it every week. So I got 8,000 people opening this email every week and that that's not to count the people, the extra impressions that don't open it but appreciate it and see it every week and think, man, Ricky's grinding. So it kind of develops that it's an extension of who you are, develops that, you know, perception from their side that I'm consistent. They're like, wow, every Wednesday dependable. It's right there in my inbox, professional, knowledgeable, right. And so it does all the heavy lifting for me to really deepen those relationships at scale, you know, versus having a call every year or, you know, doing these non-scalable activities. I can just give great service during the transaction where they're like, wow, I'll never use another agent because of the service I just got. I'll never forget about him either because of these incredible emails. For sure. At what point did you think, like, wow, I can take the foot off the gas with prospecting and what was that number where it was like, this is a million dollar email list. 10,000 when I was at 1012,000 was that was the year that I made a mill. When I got to about that number, I made a mill and I was like, boom, I'm going to take the foot. I'm going to flip the switch on prospecting, which I was spending three hours a day prospecting. I'm going to flip that switch because I was seeing the leads coming in and the leads coming in were not coming in from prospecting. Man, most of the leads are coming in from the email. So I was like, I can not prospect, still have these leads coming in and I can spend this out, these hours I used to spend prospecting and write a book, write two books, start coaching agents for free, start speaking, start, you know, doing live trainings and start building my brand as a real estate coach. Right. And so I took the time that I was spending prospecting and just deployed that into building the Ricky Kruth brand. Right. And thank God I did. I mean, I lost 100,000 a year for two years doing that because I was spending money on ads and websites and all this. I'm like spending 50% of my time on a business that loses six figure while I'm neglecting my business that makes seven figure, you know, it was crazy time. And I was like, I really doubted like there was a couple of times where I was like, should I be doing this? Yeah, you know, is this going to work? But thank God I kept going. The reason I did is because I kept getting messages from agents telling me, you know, thank you so much, you know, I was going to have to quit real estate or whatever. And now I'm crushing it. So every message I got like that just kind of kept me going. So here's here's the probably my biggest question to wrap up the email segment, because I think that that's such a profound. I think it's even more valuable that you have like a specific number tied to it. I feel like that's very right. Thank you for sharing that. What was the best way for you to get those emails? How did you get majority of them? Because there wasn't social media where it's like, hey, drop your drop your email down below. Like you had to almost I don't want to say one by one, but how did you get these emails? I did. I did. Most of them were so I call. I made 100,000 calls. Wow. That's so many calls. I was in the same stage and I know how many calls that is. And you know what? We didn't have dialers. It was all hand out. Oh my gosh. So I did that over the first 15 years of my career. So I made a ton of calls in the beginning and then I stepped out of the business for a while when I lost everything and was sleeping in my car and stuff. And then I came back. And so it wasn't like a solid 15 years of making calls, but over the course of 15 years, I made 100,000 calls. I talked to 10,000 of those people and I got 5000 emails out of it. So 5000 of that email list are literally people that I called one at a time, had conversations, developed the relationship, made a great first impression and they they said it was OK to stay in touch. I got their email and bam. So that was that was the majority of it in the beginning. And then from there, I did a bunch of email marketing like I would buy email lists and just randomly email people in the southeast about Gulf Shores beaches and condos being 50 percent off back then and stuff. And I picked up like a thousand. I do in 2008, I emailed a million people randomly and a thousand of them email me back and like 20 of them bought something that year. Now, you can't do that in today's world because because of the like the I don't want to say spam law. It's not even the spam laws. It's more so the the platforms don't allow you to do this anymore. Like if you try to do like a bulk email with random emails, like Yahoo won't even let you send that email. And you can't just plug a million emails into a constant contact or a MailChimp. They'll literally shut your account down. It's like you can't even do that anymore. And I don't even suggest doing that. That was like Wild Wild West. Ricky doesn't give a shit. I'm just going to go do what I have to do. You know, that was the year I got off the oil rig. I worked on an oil rig in 2007 in Mississippi and I was just hungry. I didn't care. I was calling people emailing people direct mail. I was doing whatever I had to do to to kind of get the business back off the ground and kind of get moving in the right direction. But but yeah. So like a thousand people email me back 20 bought something that year. So that was a thousand. So that's six thousand right there. And then I had a lot from people like referring my report or like if you if you go to my website there's a place you can sign up for the email. So like like over the years I accumulated a lot of them just because people would send it to their friends and then their friends would subscribe and different things like that. So yeah, man. Very cool. So I feel like I mean for lack of better terms that the emails are almost your secret sauce. That's how you were able to amass almost like an automatic middle of year. I don't want to say automatic because there's obviously a lot of work after that email is sent. Well, at that point it's servicing, though, instead of going out and prospecting and trying to find business, you're just having people call contact you and now you're just servicing them. And the cool thing is in the beginning of your career when you're brand new, nobody knows you. You're out here trying to get listings and sales. You're literally competing and most of the people that you go to a listing appointment, most of the sellers, you try to list their property. They're going to interview three agents, right? They're interviewing three agents to see who they want to go with. When you get to that backside of your career where you've built this database and you built all that trust, they're not interviewing three agents, bro. They're calling you, right? Or they were referred by somebody who used you and said, don't use anybody else, right? And these people are calling. They're not looking for other agents. They're they want you to handle it. Everything just kind of falls in your lap. You know, yeah, servicing the deal. There's some work there. But honestly, servicing is not hard. You know, like most agents can handle, you know, 20, 30 deals at a time. You know, if they if they have that many deals, they just don't have that many deals because the hard part is not servicing, right? The hard part is getting the clients, right? And getting the clients that trust you out of all the agents out there to represent them on this transaction. That's the tough part, right? And they have enough clients to keep consistent business where you have in closings every month. Yeah, you know, it's not that like the like what like the couple of things I learned through the crash was that number one, closings happen every single day by the truckloads, regardless of market conditions. So even in 2008, you go back, that was the worst year transaction wise, you go back and you look at county records or NMLS or whatever, dude, closings every day. And you and you look back at that and you think, man, it wasn't that bad, right? But at the time, when you're talking to prospects and they don't want to do anything. And you have to talk to, you know, 20 times more prospects to find one that wants to do something than did then you did a couple years ago, you think, man, this is horrible. This is this is tough. But when you look back at the actual statistics, now that we're here where we are, you think that wasn't so bad. There were still plenty of deals happening. Agents were getting out of the business which left more for the agents to stay in the business. You just have to realize that's a relationship business. See in the beginning, bro, this will be big for you right here. Okay, in the beginning, that first part of my career when I made all that money before I lost everything, I literally could call 10 property owners and say who wants to make 100,000 a day or 200,000 a day? Because that's that's how high prices were going. Like who wants to make 150,000 a day? Oh, out of 10 people, somebody say me. So out of 10 calls, I would find somebody that would list for say 5600,000. I would make 20-30 grand and we would sell it a day. And then that seller just rode off from the sunset with this 200,000. I had no, there was no incentive for me to at that time, like no one what I know now I should have. But at the time, there was no incentive for me to stay in touch with that, with that client because they weren't going to rebuy into this over inflated market. And I could just go make 10 more calls and make 20 more thousand. I didn't need that client anymore. So in the beginning, bro, I was just a turn and burn, I would call make 20,000 and then boom, I had no clientele, I had no database, I had no relationships. When I lost everything, I was on the oil rig and watching MLS and I was like, my clients that I represented at the bot at the top. I saw that they were buying and selling stuff at the bottom through other agents when I was out of the business. I was like, holy shit, like, I could have represented these people because we, you know, we had a connection, but I didn't stay in touch with them and I didn't really care to at the time. But then it hit me. I was like, damn, this is a relationship business. It's about people. So when I came back in 2008, I just I was like, I don't care if people want to buy or sell or not when I talk to them. I just want to be their friends forever and help them whenever they decide to do something and kind of let them run the kind of let them like run the ship, make the decisions of when they're going to buy or sell. I'm just here to help them do it when they get to get ready to I moved away, bro, from a sales person to more of a service service oriented person. That's when I realized like this business is not sales. It's service. Okay. Very good. That's I see what you mean, just keeping those lifelong clients, keeping them because maybe they want to buy an investment property in the future. Maybe they want to have their kids to keeping that contact. I think that's really important. And I think you touched a lot on that. And it's literally why I lost everything. Yeah, so I was actually just gonna ask that I feel like you've referenced this a couple of times. So I feel you went from tell me if I'm wrong here, I have the timeline wrong, you went from roofing to real estate, 30 days back to roofing, and then slowly started building your book of business. Take me from that point to where you said you're making a ton of money and lost it all. What happened? So, yeah, when I got in, I started selling the two, you know, eight months, I made my first sale started selling to a month. Well, as I started selling to a month, the market kind of took off and I went from two month to like five to 10 a month. And pretty much like overnight, I'm a millionaire like I made a million dollars. And I was like 22. And I just started flipping houses, right? So I took the money and I started flipping houses, I would flip one, and then I would sell it and I would flip two and I would sell and flip three and I was borrowing money to buy these houses, I was just putting a down payment down. It was interest only loans. And the bank would give me as much as I wanted. Back then there was no documentation of income. I could say I was making 10 million a year and they would have they didn't check. They just gave me whatever. You know, they would have their buddy appraiser appraise it. And, you know, there was really no regulation at all on any of this stuff like there is now, which is a great thing. Like the market now is so solid. I mean, it's ridiculously solid. And so I made a million of flipping houses, borrowing money. So I would like, I kept building that flipping portfolio where I got up to where I don't know how many houses I had there at the very end, maybe like 10. But I had like a million and a half worth of debt. The market started to go down. It started to go down early 2005 in my market. And that like I sold my last condo in February, I think of 2005. And then I sold my first condo coming back in May of 2008. So over three years there, I sold zero. And so I had all this debt and all these houses I was trying to flip. When the market turned, it was like overnight, the equity just disappeared. So like I was struggling to sell these houses for only what I owe just to break even on these houses and lose my payment. Right? Yeah. 20% down. Some of them were like, yeah, some of them were 100. Some of them were some of them I would put like five, I think I put like five, five or 10% down on most of them. Okay. Right. So like still a good chunk of money for 10 houses. Yeah. So like even that, I was loot, I was I could I was having I was struggling. So like the first couple I sold, I got my money back. And then the next couple I sold, I broke even. And then I couldn't sell the the next few. And I had to let those go back to the bank, right? But I kept hanging on with all the reserves I had. I had reserves. Like I was trying to do it right. You know, like the golden rule for me growing up was by real estate. But nobody told me there was a right and wrong way to do it. And flipping houses into taking debt to flip houses into an overheated market was just not a good idea. But there were guys, bro, that were like 50 60 years old, that were just like real estate moguls in my area that were doing it. And so I'm like, okay, I'm just going to do what the moguls are doing safe. Yeah, nobody was telling me this was a bad idea. Everybody was saying go go go. And I was making a ton of money. And then when things went bad, it went really bad. I depleted my reserves after whatever, eight months or so, had to foreclose on some houses. And then I had to let everything go. All my cars, all my houses, everything went away. I couldn't I couldn't pay any payments. And so because of everything you lost or is that because of the slowdown in your real estate sales? It's both right? So real estate sales slowed down. And I couldn't afford to make the payments on all the properties I was flipping, right? And so there was two things. There was I didn't understand how to sell real estate as a real estate agent in a market shift. You know, I didn't realize closings continue to happen and build relationships with people. You know, the people that buy on the way up are different, not the same group of people that buy as the market's going down. It's two different groups, right? And so if you're a new real estate agent, you don't realize this is like the people that that you're representing as the market's going up, you know, you're like, I'll have all these buyers and the market shifts, those buyers that were that were looking at stuff that we're about to buy, they kind of put the brakes on and you think, oh crap, it's going to zero. I'm not I'm not going to make it. I got to get out of the business. But we don't realize is that those buyers are going to go away in this new group of investors are going to emerge as the market comes down. And what you have to do is realize there's going to be a bridge there between the old market and the new market. And we're going to enter into this new normal that we can capitalize on big time. And so I didn't I didn't understand all this stuff. You know, I mean, if I understood that, then I would have understood not to flip houses and overheated market borrow a bunch of money, right? I just I didn't know anything. I'm glad I went through all of that. But yeah, dude, like looking back, I'm glad it happened the way it did. But I could have continued to sell real estate during that time and crush it. Of course, I got back in 2008 and crushed it. I mean, I'm at 100,000 that year. Yeah. And but there was two things I didn't know how to continue to sell as an agent and I lost everything as an investor. So I was just completely flat broke. No, you know, insight or direction on how to continue to do real estate in that environment. Of course, it was the worst real estate crash we've ever seen in our our life. Yeah. So, you know, got to hand it to hand it to that. But yeah, somebody gave me their beat up for contour. Like I had to ride the brakes for the tail lights, you know, like I had to ride the brakes. So lights are working on the back of a boombox in the back seat. I went back to roofing houses. And I was doing that. I did that for about a year. And then I jumped on an oil rig in Mississippi. But I was sleeping in that car. I was sleeping in the car, sleeping on French couches, eating out of people's refrigerators. I filed bankruptcy during that time. Well, I was just completely. But I had two jobs. I was roofing and serving tables. You know, and then when I took the oil rig job, it was every other week. So it's like, oh, cool, I can work on the oil rig a week and then do real estate a week or a real estate or a real estate. So you went back to roofing in 2005. And how did you end up sleeping in your car? And what was your rise like sleeping from your car until your peak earnings? And what was that whole experience like? Yeah, so that's that's cool. So when I when I finally stepped out of real estate, I hung on as long as I could. Here's the thing, bro. All right. You know, I told you I grew up roofing and like hard work is kind of my thing, right? So I don't care what I'm doing. Yeah, I didn't care that I lost everything and got kicked back to the bottom financially. Like my life didn't change at all because my life is this, wake up, work as hard as I can, go home, go to sleep, do it over again, right? Every day. So it doesn't matter if I'm doing real estate, roofing, oil rig, serving tables, concierge, cooking in restaurants, well, whatever I've done, whatever I do, it's going to be the same thing. Wake up, work as hard as I can. So my life doesn't change at all. See, that's what a lot of people don't understand. They want to go full time real estate, they got their license, they have a job they don't like, they're part time real estate. Now they just want to go full time, want to go full time. I'm like, dude, calm down. Your life's not going to change at all. It's actually going to get worse because when you go full time real estate, you're going to have to work more than you're working now. It's going to be a lot more stressful because now it's on you to produce. You don't get paid just to show up. Yeah, like take it slow, man. Like it's okay. You got plenty of time here, but your life isn't going to change much because guess what? You wake up now, you work as hard as you can, you go home, go to sleep, you do it again the next day. Nothing's going to change when you get full time real estate, you're going to wake up work as hard as you can. And so that that's how I am and was when I got out of real estate, I was just getting up at the same time going and getting on a roof instead of going to the office, right? And I was like 23 or something like I was still, you know young enough to go on and run around on a roof, you know, without, you know, like there's no way I could do it right now, but it wouldn't be the same as when I was like 25. But but yeah, no, no, no. So I had my friend gave me their car. And at that point, like that's when I was partying a lot too. So like I would go out to bars till like they closed at three, I would literally go and shut the bars down with all my buddies and then like sleep in my car. I slept in my car many times and just wake up and just go drive straight to the job site. But yeah, I quit drinking. How'd you go from that? Sorry. Say that again. I quit drinking in 2014, like I almost died one night. And I was like, I will never take another sip, smoke anything, do anything ever again. And like, thank God, I don't know how I like quit doing everything without having to go to AA and stuff. But that was a super blessing. Because if it wasn't if I didn't quit drinking this stuff, honestly, doing drugs and everything, then I wouldn't. I would never written two books. I would never be speaking on stages or building a huge influence. I would be doing none of that. I would actually probably I know I would be dead. For sure I'd be dead. Definitely in gel something like that. But um, yeah, no, so I'm sleeping in my car, sleeping on friends couches, eating out of people's refrigerators. And so that was 2005 and six. So like about halfway through, let's see, when did I start is actually probably towards the end of 2005 when I got back on the roof. And so the whole year 2006, I'm roofing. And this is my life. And then 2007, the entire year, I worked on the oil rig. From January to December, I got laid off January, like in the first weeks of January. And so on the oil rig, I was there every other week. So it gave me a place to live on my weeks that I was working on the rig, like you live on the rig. And so I was like, wow, I get a place to stay for a week. I make 5000 a month. I get a week, I get two weeks off a month to go like try to do real estate again or whatever. That didn't work out because in the oil rig, you work so hard, it takes you like several days to recover. Like when you come back from the week, like it takes you a half a week for your body to recover from the work. It's ridiculous. Plus crazy every, plus every other week, you do six, six in the morning till six at night, one week, you come home, then the next week, you do six in the afternoon to six in the morning, all week. So by the time your body, so by the time your body gets used to working, you know, all night, now you're back to real life next week, trying to like readjust to waking up at six instead of going to bed at six in the morning. And so that takes like, it takes a whole week basically for me to kind of recover and get my mind to where I could actually try to do some real estate. It just didn't work out for sure as far as that goes. But I did make some money and you know, so I did that. But okay, getting back into real estate. So there was a guy at my very first brokerage who taught me everything. He was kind of a mentor. He's we're still best friends today. And he he taught me how to look at property owners, what to put on letters, what to put on emails, what to say to property owners, like he laid it out for me. Super guy, an incredible real estate agent. But he later on, when I was working on the old rig in 2007, you know, dude, I kept three bills when I lost everything, my cell phone, my real estate license and my MLS. That's literally the only bills that I had. I had no insurance power bill rent, nothing. I wouldn't let those three things go like I was going to hang on to my real estate license no matter what. So I still had MLS. So like in 2007, when I was on the old rig, I was I was studying MLS because like I had, dude, I had to figure out why I failed. You know, like I'm the most honest, hardworking, dependable guy I know. Where did I go wrong here? And it wasn't just the bad investments. It was the why can't I continue to sell real estate question. So anyway, I was studying MLS and I saw this guy that helped me in the beginning. He sold 30 properties in 2006. I was like, Oh my God, dude, because here I am sold zero roofing houses that year. People are getting out of the business left and right. And this dude closes 30 deals. And this is the guy that helped me in the beginning, like my buddy, my bro. I was like, I called him and I was like, how in the world did you sell 30? That's three deals a month. When the market is crazy. When the market is nothing. And these are Gulffront condos. This isn't cheap stuff. And I was like, bro, what's up? Yeah, so he's like, I'm curious. What was it? He said, come over to the house, man, I'll sit down and let me let me show you what I got going on. I was like, boom, done. So I show up. So in the beginning of my career, you know, he taught me phone calls, emails and postcards, right? I show up to his house in 2000 in the beginning of 2007. I'm on the oil rig. And I'm on a week off. And I'm like, what's up? And he's like, here we go right here. Guess what he said? Phone calls, emails and postcards. The same thing. It just had a different message behind it. It was like, hey, prices are down 50%. The beaches are just as beautiful. But prices are down 50%. Who wants one? Right? He was called property owners, you know, that had to sell because they were in trouble, right? Do you need to sell? Do you want to sell? What can I do to help you? So he was like hitting it from the sellers and the buyers. He just he just moved with the market, man, it just changed his, you know, his lingo and his strategies and everything. And I was like, wow. And so that's when I started buying emails and sending those emails because that's something I could do on the oil rig. I could like, that's something I have to talk to someone. I could just send emails out and do some marketing that way. So like, I would hit everybody up in the southeast that might come to Gulf Shores on vacation. Right. So like, I sell to people all over the country that come to Gulf Shores on vacation. And so I have a huge, you know, market, right? I'm basically the whole country, as opposed to a lot of agents, they just have their geographical location. My clients are all over the country, which is really cool. But yeah, that was kind of the journey, man. So then, you know, I just I started getting some traction there. I sold a couple. I got laid off from the oil rig, closed on a couple deals. Then I went hard on phone calls. Once I got in the office off the oil rig, full time back in real estate, then I just made phone calls eight hours a day. I was making calls. Wow. And so take me take me from there to your peak. What was your rise to to where you are? And what were some of your 2008 I made 100,000, which was twice as much as I made in 2000 on the oil rig the year before twice as much. And I was like, Oh my God, dude, like, like, thank you, Jesus. Like I made. Yeah, what was that? Dude, it was amazing, man. Like, I think of 100,000 now. And I'm like, you know, that's that's nothing now. But back then it's like, it was so heaven sent, man. I was like, I don't have to go out here and risk my life on an oil rig because like there was a dude that died on a rig like a couple miles from us. There were I saw plenty of people get hurt really bad. I'm like, I don't have to I didn't have to risk my life this year. I'm in the air conditioned environment, basically get to set my own schedule, help these people buy and sell real estate, something I love to do. And I made twice as much money. It was just it was a it was a real it was a surreal moment. The next year I made the next year I made no, no, no, no, no, I take that back in 2008 I made 80, which was twice as much as I made the year before I was making 44,000 on the rig. And then in 2009, I made 100. Okay. And then 2010, I made 150. So that year 2010 was the BP oil spiel. You remember that one? Vega, I was only 10 years all the time. So I don't remember too much. So the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was an explosion of a rig in the Gulf of Mexico that calls this massive oil spill in the Gulf. And that's like right out here, you know, in our waters here. And it scared so many people. It was a mini recession in my area because we're beachfront. And so people thought that oil was going to be washing up on the beach and nobody's going to ever come here again. And everything was going to go to hell. Well, and agents were leaving the leaving the area. And I took everything I learned from 2008. And that whole crash. And I was like, okay, this is a mini recession. Here's my moment to test out my theories on how to make it no matter what the market does. Let me go back to relationship building. Let me go back to what can I help you? Because when prices go down, that means sellers are belling, right? And I need to be the one helping them bail out of those situations as well as find the buyers you want to take advantage of these low prices. Like there's so much opportunity when markets shift like that. And that's what I did. Sure. I mean, I remember telling all the agents in the office, I was like, guys, here's what we need to do. Calm down, call all your clients, let them know what's going on, keep them informed on the situation, and just see what you can do to help them see that a property owners only have three options man at any given time, no matter what the market's doing, they can either buy, they can sell, or they can hold. There's only three options. Okay. And so it's like, okay, you know, when the market shifts, it's like, okay, Mr. Property owner, do you want to buy because it's cheaper? Do you need to sell because you're in trouble? Are you just going to ride this thing out and see what happens? Either way, it goes. Do you already have an agent you're working with? I'd love to work with you. Can I stay in touch? That's the basis of them email. Yeah, yeah. Like when you ask for email, it's like, you know, you know, hey, you know, is there anything you do to help you know? Cool. Well, listen, I'm sure at some point in the future, you're going to buy or sell, I would, I would imagine, right? Right. I would love the opportunity to work with you in that day comes. Would it be okay if I just stayed in touch? And then you let them verbally say yes. Because at that point, they don't know you're going to ask for an email or whatever. They're just thinking, sure, you can stay in touch. And then you're like, cool, what's a good email for you? And they almost feel obligated to that point to give you that email, because they've already verbally committed to staying in touch with you. It doesn't always work, but it works a lot more than it doesn't. But yeah, like, so in 2010, I made 150, 50% more. So in this recessionary mini recession market, I made 50% more money than I made the year before. And that's when I was like, boom, dude, that's when I was like, I got this. And I went to remix, which is the most expensive place to work for. But I wanted to be around all the top producers. This was the top, the highest producing office in our area, all the players, the guy was talking about the help me in the beginning. He was there. I was like, I'm going there. I got, I've got this. So I went there. 2010. And then I just busted my ass, dude. And so by 2014, I was selling 100 properties a year, just a single agent. I was the number one remix agent in Alabama. So I was the number one agent in my entire MLS out of all agents for eight years in a row from 2014 to 2021. Yeah. And I was out selling entire 20 agent teams by myself. So I was the number one agent in my entire MLS for eight years in a row. But then three years out of that, I was the number one remix agent in the state. And then, you know, I was like top five, you know, every year of that eight years. So yeah, it was like from two. Okay, so get this, I get in, I make a meal, I lose it, I come back in 2008. I took everything I learned and then it still took me six years from 2008 to 2014 of grinding my face off to get to 100 deals a year. Right. And all these agents nowadays, they like get mad if they don't hit 100 deals in the first two or three years. You know. So how so so what was your your gross income like when you're you're the top agent in Alabama, you're the top agent in remix? What was that like? 2014 that first year I hit it, I made 600. And then I made 600 again, then I made 750. And then that next year, 2017 was the first year hit a meal. And then I was always at like 1.1 or so every year after that. Yeah. As far as the real estate commissions business. And so really, it just sounds like from what I've gathered, you went through like a like a personal recession, like the actual recession, the oil spill. And it just sounds like you double down and every time it got harder, you double down. I feel like you have two options when times get tough, you can either bail or like you said, you just weren't you didn't like you weren't in it long enough and you just kept doubling down. And I think that's something that I've I've personally only lived through two recessions. And that's something that I'm really starting to learn is I mean, if you consider now a recession, it sounds from what I've been hearing from 2008-2009, like this is almost a joke of a recession because we don't even know if we're in a like a technical recession. I mean, the gross GDP, you can debate that all day. But like 2008 sounded literally like actually painful to where now it's just like you feel a little bit inflation tie whatever. But man, 2008-2009, I mean, I was eight, nine years old and I have memories of recessionary conversations with my family, with my friends. Yeah. So what would you think is your like if you had to attribute obviously, you said just grind, grind, grind outside of just persistence. What is one of the key things that you attribute your success to? Building influence, you know, like talking to those property owners, making those great first impressions, but then like collecting their data so I can remark it to them, right? And then building the this this social media influence, right? On the coaching side, it like I think all businesses come back to accumulation of relationships. And then what are the what are the systems that you have on the back end, the infrastructure to remark it and stay in front of those people that you create those. So you need to have a system that brings in new people into your business, whatever that is. And then you've got to have a system. And then, of course, you got to have your communication skills down to, you know, to basically prove to them, like make them comfortable with you. And to prove to them that you are a hardworking honest person that's going to look out for their best interest, no matter what kind of business you're in. So you got to have like a funnel of bringing new clients in, you got to have a communication, you know, process to make sure they understand who you are, what you do and you're here to help. But then you got to have a remarketing infrastructure on the back end. So like, you know, with you guys, you know, it's YouTube, right? YouTube's the big thing for you guys. You know, that's how you bring new people in. That's how you stand. That's how you communicate that, you know, that you're here to help. And then it's also how you remark it on the back end. So you just have to have something in place. And for me, it's like, let me hit all platforms, you know, I want to do every platform, I want to accumulate as many people as I can on every platform, including email, I want to talk to as many people as I can. And I want to try to be more efficient with who I'm talking to. I think that's a big thing is targeting the right clients. If you're an agent, it's going to be property owners that own the exact properties you want to sell, not buying random leads online. That's not the most efficient thing to do. Most efficiently is to have conversations with people that own the exact properties you want to do, you want to sell. You know, if you're, you know, like you guys with house hack, it's going to be more so the agents in the different areas, developing those relationships and how you guys continue to build those relationships and stay in touch with those agents to send you those deals. You know, so each business, you need to target who that who that perfect connection is that customer continue building new relationships with with those type of customers. I mean, for you guys, it's almost like the agents or the customers for your business, you know, those are the ones you're building relationships with to send you deals. Same thing with agents, it's property owners. They're the ones that you create relationships with to send you deals. So I think figuring out who that niche customer is, developing a system that that you have an inflow high frequency of new customers coming in to then have a system to develop the relationships and then stay in touch with them forever. That's different for every business, you know, those processes, but that's really the bottom line. Every, every lead generation avenue comes down to data collection, communication, conversion, remarkets. It's a four step process for every single lead gen activity there is. Okay, but yeah, I there's so much I just you've done a great job. And I think that some of the most valuable things that I've taken away is the how important is to develop relationships with the people that you're wanting to work with, not just like you were like how you did in the early stage. Okay, one client call boom 20k done, like continuing to cultivate that relationship. I think that's super important. So you also had the opportunity a couple of days ago to shout out Kevin meet Kevin. What were some of the things that you don't that you don't necessarily pick up to the camera? What were some of the things you learned? What was just your overall impression and experience like? Well, number one, it was over the top. It was just a really incredible experience. I had a lot of fun. I learned a lot. My thing was is, you know, I wanted to learn more about his businesses, like I didn't understand house hack to the fullest, like I want to invest. But I wanted to know more, you know, so like going out there. The big the biggest thing for me, my biggest objective was to just learn more about that business to solidify my decision to invest in it or not. And so and so I did that. And like I'm working on getting it set up where I can throw some money there for sure. No doubt. And then another thing that was really cool is that he's the exact same person on YouTube as he is in person. Because like there's not there's not like a different Kevin, like it's the same person, you know, which was really cool to see dude smart as a whip, as you know, you know, and super high energy and super extroverted. It's just good to be around that type of energy, honestly. But I learned a lot about why he did the ETF. I learned a lot about how he even looked at my YouTube, like and actually looked at thumbnails, looked at titles, like gave me advice and stuff. But it was really cool to just be able to basically spend 11 hours right next to him picking his brand about anything I wanted to pick his brand on, as well as watch him evaluate and analyze the area that we went and looked at, you know, questions he asked the agents things that he was thinking about, you know, in between looking at properties. That was very interesting, you know, to kind of see that firsthand in person. So overall incredible experience. I did learn a ton. You know, what I love is his YouTube. I didn't realize his YouTube he's doing like lies and then chopping that up and posting those. So I'm doing that now. I did that two days ago. I did that two days ago, and it worked out beautifully. So I'm going to start doing that not every day. I'll probably do like two or three a week. But I thought that was really cool how he's doing that. It kind of allows you to produce a lot more content, honestly, for sure, and give your audience like a live, you basically have a live audience, you know, when you're creating your it's a really cool little model there. So yeah, he's done. Yeah, I mean, I what you said is why I work here to why it's because being around Kevin is just it makes you more efficient. You find ways to become how to make things a little bit faster, how to optimize your schedule just that much better. And I think you touched on a lot of the things. And something that both of you have taught me is that importance of relationships. Something that I am that I'm grateful for and that I'm selfish about is I get to watch Kevin develop relationships and you can see that come through on the vlogs. But when I hear Kevin on the phone or when I hear Kevin with an employee or a new hire, seeing Kevin develop those relationships and hearing how important that is from you, I've started to just conclude that the real estate business like the big money businesses, how good is your relationship with that person? And I think that that's super important to hear from you because it also just verifies what I've been learning from Kevin is just build relationships, focus on relationships. So thank you for that. Yeah, if I had anything I could tell like new agents or people getting into real estate or whatever, it's that when you're talking to prospects, okay, literally do not care if they buy or sell or not when you're talking to them, right? You've got to take the you got to take that out of the equation and more so the biggest thing with prospects is if they do want to buy or sell is really understanding the back story of why they want to buy or sell. That's it. A lot of agents and you know, investors, they, they, they just they skip over that part they just kind of skim the surface here where, okay, you want to buy or sell great, let me come look at the house. What do you want for it? This is what I could sell it for. They get in all that and they kind of bypass the entire, well, why are you selling? You know, what's the back story? Because they didn't wake up one day and say, I want to sell a property for no reason, right? Like their mom died, their kids went to college, they want to upgrade, they want to invest like something's happening in their life that's way bigger than the transaction until you know what that is, you can't even, you, you can't help them and like furthermore, you can't even comp the house. Like when you're comping a house, there's the comps and here's what the mathematical equation of what the, what the house should be priced at. But then if I don't know why somebody's selling, like their motivation plays into how I price it. Like if they're a, I got to sell it because of this, I'm like, okay, we need to go a little bit under what, what the comps are to make sure we sell it in the timely fashion. If they're a, oh, I'll sell if, if they're one of those I'll sell if sellers, I'll sell if I can get this crazy price. I'll know that I got to price it on the high end if I want to try to get this listing. You know, and again, agents think they're the God of real estate. It's like a property's worth what somebody's willing to, willing to sell it for and somebody's willing to pay for it, not what you think it's worth based on comps. I mean, things sell way higher than comps and way lower than comps all the time. Right. You never know what something's going to sell for things I think will sell in a day never sell and things I think will never sell selling a day happens all the time. Very cool. Well, Ricky, I, I have learned a lot. I hope everybody else has learned a lot as well. If you haven't yet, consider subscribing. But Ricky, where can people learn more about your story, your business? And if they want to be coached, where can they come and learn from you? Yeah, all my stuff is like all my free courses and training and scripts and tutorials, videos of me making live calls and stuff. That's all at zero to diamond.com. I post four to four to six days, four to six times a day on Instagram. I'm going to answer all my Instagram messages. So if anybody has any questions or anything I can do to help or just somebody wants to reach out to say hello. Instagram DM is the best place for that. Great. Ricky, I appreciate your time. I know you're a busy man, but I thank you for coming on here. And if you have, if you need anything, feel free to reach out and hopefully we can have you come shadow again because I was a ton of fun. Yeah, man. Now enjoy it, bro. Keep crushing it. Hey, thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope it brought you tons of value. Let me know what you think in the comments and I'm going to put the next video right here for you so you don't have to go anywhere. You can just click this video to keep that Ricky train rolling. Hey, we'll see you guys on this next video and I'll talk to you soon.