 I think that residential agents can learn a lot from the commercial agents, the way that they operate. If you want to close one bill a week, you need 15 to 20 active buyers and sellers, people that said, I'm going to buy or sell soon and I might use you as an agent. Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for Ricky Karoo. He is an investor, a speaker, and soon to be remembered, in my opinion, as a legend in the industry. The cool thing about what he was doing was he was documenting everything. Like he would post his calls, his work he was putting in, the strategies he was sharing. If you got something good, I'd be interested. Oh, cool. What do you like? And you create it however you want to to the moon. It can be small, it can be medium, it can be large, it can be anything you want it to be. All the gold is in the 95% of the people you talk to that do not want to do anything today. When they see results and they see what you got going on, they're like, wow, this is the real deal. This is an agent. You got to thank guys. Time goes by so fast and it compounds so quickly. The object is to get people to feel comfortable with you. That's the only way they're going to do business with you. Yes. Hello, Ricky, how are you? We're doing good. Awesome. Well, my name is Diana Rutherford and I'm a local realtor here in Southwest Washington. And it is our honor and privilege to be able to sit here and kind of pick your brain. We have an amazing group of agents that I've joined on in either through Zoom or here at my office. We are all just eager to just sit back and kind of take any nugget that you have to share with us as we are venturing into kind of a new market than what we had coming into that we had last year. So thank you again for your time to sit with us. I know you're a busy guy, so your time is super appreciative. No, I appreciate you guys even having me and hope I can shed some light and maybe help some of you guys recalibrate your business and maybe think about it from a different perspective and look at it more from a growth standpoint than just trying to get by kind of standpoint, which I think where most agents are, you know, they're just trying to have a great 2024 when, you know, in fact, it's what's way more interesting to me is thinking about how long an agent is going to be in the business. Okay, let's say they're going to be in the business and they plan on be in the business. If everything goes great for, you know, 10, 20 years, I'm thinking about, okay, well, if I'm talking to a prospect, you know, regardless if they want to buy or sell today or not, will they in the next 10 or 20 years? And if so, that's a very valuable prospect to me. And I'm thinking about, how do I stack, you know, you have to think, how can I stack as many deals into this 10 to 20 year career as I possibly can? And I think that's what a lot of agents are missing. I think they're throwing away things that, you know, that are strong possible. I've said one deal, like a prospect is going to do, you know, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 deals over the next 20 years and refer like 15 people to somebody who also do, you know, 5 to 10 deals over the next 20 years. It's ridiculous. So listen, I've been doing this for a long time. It's been about 22 years. And I've really made it incredibly simple for people to understand how to really build a massive business. And so I think the most value I can really bring you guys is maybe to get into some Q&A into what you guys are having trouble with in your businesses and kind of shed light there. Otherwise, I can just ramble about whatever you guys want me to ramble about. Well, I do have some great questions. I compiled a bunch of questions from a lot of agents in our area and a lot of them were fairly similar. So I've got a few stacked and then I will be happy to let you ramble on if some of these questions kind of add a tangent. We all love tangents, right? So 2023 had its highs and its lows. I think a lot of us who are here survived, right? And we're trying to get out of that survival mode, but we still are kind of in that tread. What is one piece of business that went well for you or what you saw that went well in 2023? And what did not but you thought would? Yeah, that's good. I mean, listen, we need to think relative as well when we talk about this because we're really kind of getting back to 2018, 17, 18, 19 business, right? It's really kind of, the last four or five years have been really abnormal. But what is normal? What's the definition of that? Every single year is different. 17 was different than 16, different than 15, different than 18. Every year had its own market personality and it will. Every single year is going to be just a different animal and sometimes more extreme than the next. But one thing that is never going to waver is the fact that there are truckloads, massive amounts of closings happening every day. So if you go back to 2008 and during the worst, and last year was 2008, we had the same amount of transactions last year as we had in 2008, really close. But look, we're still all here. We still all survived. We're still doing great. And most agents are doing a lot better than they did in 2008. That's because prices didn't crash along with the transactions. But back then, it was like force selling. There was massive amounts of foreclosures. Let's put it like this. There's always a pocket of people who are willing and able and want to buy no matter what's going on in the market. When you dwindle it down to the worst time, there's still this pocket of people who are buying no matter what. It never goes away. And the problem with 2008 was there were 4 million listings and now we have like half a million listings. So that pocket of people back then could literally pick and choose what they wanted and they could tell the seller, hey, if you don't take this price, I'll go buy this other listing versus now you still have the same amount of people, okay, that same pocket, that same group that want to buy. But the difference is, is basically the seller is saying, well, if you don't want to pay this price, I'll sell it to this buyer. So the roles have reversed. It's the same transaction result, but it's the roles have reversed from buyer's market back then to seller's market now. And that's what's very interesting about this whole thing. It's crazy to think we have the same amount of transactions as we did in 2008, but the roles are completely reversed. It's like the opposite market. But what was working in 2023? I'll tell you what worked for me like my entire career and that was just circle prospecting and just calling property owners and saying, hey, what in the world can I do to help you? And that works really well because people are always thinking about moving, okay? Now you fast forward to the current market, nobody's thinking about moving. They want to, but they can't. They're not able to because their mortgage payment is going to double if they do that. They can, they bought a house for 250. It's worth 500 now, hypothetically. They're like, oh, we can take the 250 equity and put it into the new house, but their mortgage is 200,000. So now they're getting into something for 250, right? They're putting 300 because they owe 200. They get 300. They put the 300 on the new house. They have the same loan amount, but their mortgage payment like almost doubles and they just not going to do it even though they built a lot of equity. And plus, like if you trade, if you trade like that, what are you doing? Trading equal for equal? You have 500 for 500. You're not really stepping up. That's only like if you wanted to change locations. The point is, is that 90% of mortgages are under 5%. So nobody's really wanting or can or is going to move compared to what it used to be. So that whole what can I do to help you thing doesn't work as well as it did when I was coming up. And so now what do we have to do? I think that residential agents can learn a lot from the commercial agents and the way that they operate. That's what I've been thinking a lot about lately is, is how we literally, as agents can create demand out of thin air. So I tell agents all the time that if you want to, and this is not hypothetical here, if you want to close one deal a week, you need 15 to 20 active buyers and sellers, people that said, I'm going to buy or sell soon and I might use you as an agent. That's an active buyer seller that you're now working with and following up with until they do something. So if you have 15 to 20 of those at all times, you're going to close one a week. This is not a high, this is not a theory. This is not a, I think this might happen. Every single agent that does this closes one deal a week, every single time. If you want to close two a week, you have 25 plus. If you want to close one a month, you have 5 to 10. It's real simple math, really simple. And so, you know, you talk to agents and like, how many, you know, some people are like, I'm working with four, I'm working with zero, or whatever the case may be. You can literally pick up the phone and start calling random property owners and say, hey, I'm an agent. I see you on this house. Let me ask you something. If I had a great deal on a rental property, would you be interested? You talk to four or five sellers, you're going to run into one or two or three that are like, yeah, if you got something good, I'd be interested. Oh, cool. What do you like? Single family duplex, fourplex, commercial, industrial, land. What are you into when it comes to this? Boom. You have a buyer out of thin air. Literally in a couple of minutes, you got, everybody could go create a buyer in like, like five minutes after this call. And then what do you do? You take that buyer, you find all the properties that fit their criteria and you start calling them and you say, Hey, I have a buyer in that process that you're calling property owners for that buyer who's a property owner to see if they'll sell their property to this buyer who's a property owner and they don't want to sell. Now you're going to find out if they're a buyer that you can then call more property owners for to see if you can get them to sell their property to your new buyer and the, and the, the, the, it just continues and continues. You literally create demand supply, your own supply and demand. Like you're your own local market. Like there's the market, there's the national market, there's your area and then there's you and you create it however you want to to the moon. It can be small, it can be medium, it can be large, it can be anything you want it to be. And most of us are just sitting on the sidelines saying, how do I do this? Pick up the phone and start calling people and asking them what they want to do. And this is the difference. Back then I was like, what can I do to help you? But now you've got to call with the situation. Let me give you a couple examples. Let's say you have a listing and it's a four bedroom call all the three bedrooms within the, within a, you know, 10 mile radius and say, Hey, I see you got a three bedroom. Would you like to get into a four bedroom today? Right? Or you've got something on the water call everyone across the street that's not on the water. Would you like to upgrade to the waterfront property? Right? Say somebody else's listing, somebody else's listing, you know, like somebody else, you know, you don't, you can be a brand new agent and there's a listing right here. Okay. It's a, it's a three bedroom. Let's call everybody that has smaller three bedrooms or like you pick out, you target property owners that could upgrade into the listing you're calling about regardless of that listing is yours or not. Like it's just like get to work. There's so much you can do. Take it a step further. Find a great rental property this for sale on or off market. Start calling people. I have this great rental property, this great investment, this strip center, this whatever it is, or do you like stuff like that? You know, I'm just calling to see if you might be interested in something like that or if you're interested in other things. What can I do to help you today? And so you're calling with situations, right? As opposed to just, what can I do to help you? You're saying, hey, I have this thing that you might want to upgrade to or I have this investment property or hey, I have a buyer that would possibly be specifically interested in your property. You're not interested? Okay. Cool. Well, let me ask you this before you go. If I had a great deal on a rental property, would you be interested in that? And you just continue to push and grind and like, I'm telling you, this is how commercial agents operate. Okay. This is how they operate. Everything's off market and they're just connecting buyers and sellers. And that's really the way that we should start operating because you literally just create demand out of thin air. Now, to sum it all up, all these people that you're talking to, let's get back to building the career, right? The 10-year career, all these people you're talking to, all the gold is in the 95% of the people you talk to that do not want to do anything today, but will do eight deals over the next decade. That's all the gold because when you build that relationship and they never forget who you are and they come back to you, that is, that's called residual business. That's business that just comes to you. You didn't go in three years when they buy, when they sell their property and upgrade to something and refer three people to you. All those four deals came to you residually because the relationship you put in place three years prior and then stayed in touch and had a system and a foundation in place where they never forget who you are. And how do we do that? Two words, weekly email on the same day of the week, forever, no matter what. You write it, not generic, telling your opinions on the market, restaurants, news, events, great deals, et cetera. It's real simple. It's so simple. A caveman. It's really easy, guys. I love that. And you know, I think one thing that you spoke that just really like highlighted the group that we have here. You know, we're a bunch of individual agents who are on teams less than five. So we wake up every day being accountable to our own selves, really no team to lean on. And you talked about that question, how can I help you? And I love that motto and I love thinking about going outside of going above and beyond that. Can you kind of give us a little bit more fire underneath our rear ends on how to be, again, more relevant, stay relevant to our current clients, those who we circle prospect, not just outside of emails, but conversations about real estate are happening every day between people at church or people at daycare, just random mom, paw groups. How do we continue to stay relevant going into a market that people are still uncomfortable being in? Well, I mean, when people see you working, they start to really respect. People love hard workers. Number one, even if nobody sees you in the office grinding away, trust me, they always know. When they see that email, when they see that you've been selling stuff, like the results speak. You don't just not work hard and sell a bunch of properties. When they see results and they see what you got going on, they're like, wow, this is the real deal. This is an agent. And most people have seen agents come into their life or whether it be their cousin or brother or friend or something, they come in and then they leave the business in within a year or two. So they've seen a lot of people come and go. And so when you come at them as an agent, they're thinking, okay, we'll see how you do because they've seen so many people come and go. 90% of people don't make it in the business. And so they've kind of got this little defense mechanism up where they kind of want to sit back and see, okay, are they going to morph into? Are they going to transition into actually being an agent? Well, we can walk around and call ourselves an agent all day long. But until we actually have consistent sales, we're doing this for a living and we've made a career out of this, we really aren't to the level where, because you got to think about it. They've got hundreds and maybe even thousands depending on your market options for a real estate agent. Okay? How are you going to be the one? You know, there's a lot of factors here. But back to your question, people talking in church and all this stuff. Listen, I'm an introvert if you can't tell. So like when I'm in public and stuff, I don't wear the name badge. Like I didn't wrap my car. Like I'm hiding behind the fruit. I used to go to parties and stuff when I partied and stuff. And like we go to like after hours, business after hours, and my mom would be there. And I would hear her across the room be like, Ricky, this guy wants to sell his house. And I was like, Oh God, shut the hell up. You know, don't tell mom a real estate agent, whatever you do, right? That's how I was. And I still am. Like I don't, I don't really want to be that guy. So everybody has their own thing. Okay. So the question becomes, what works well for you? Because I know people that literally go out drinking at bars every night. I probably should cut this from the video and sell tens of millions every single year to developers and all kinds of stuff from, that's like their networking is going out and partying. And like, that's how they make their contacts. And that's how they sell their property. The weirdest, craziest, strangest, legion activities that you can think of, there's people making millions of dollars every year off of that. You know, like you think about the snake oil salesman guys and the high pressure people and the weird, all that stuff, people are making millions and millions doing exactly that. So it works for somebody. Every single thing works for somebody. The trick and the work in the business, especially in the beginning of your career and whatever stage of that journey you're in is trying to identify what those top one, two, or three things are that really work well for you. You know, and going all in on those things, figuring out what's most efficient for you to have the most conversations. The only thing between you guys and a million bucks a year or thousands of one on one conversations with people in your market. So we can drag that out over the course of your life and never get there and just die being a real estate agent, or we can knock it out in the next three to five, get to the million a year, have a nice residual business where we're spending like 20, 25 hours a week doing 100 deals a year and then spend the other time that we used to really try to build our business and prospect, take that time back and go invest it somewhere else, spend more time with the family, go on vacations, like build other businesses, whatever it is you want to do. But we can get there faster if we understand what's the vehicle that gets us there. Every single marketing, every single lead gen activity comes back to the same thing, creating a list of people to call. Think about it. Like Facebook ads, creates a list of people to call. Zillow leads creates a list of people to call. Open houses, networking events, collect business cards, call them all the next day. There's nothing that doesn't, that isn't designed to try to get a list of people for you then to follow up with phone calls, right? Am I right? Yep, follow up. Okay, so the point that what I'm saying is, is that since that's where we're going anyway, I'm going to skip all that stuff. I'm not going to do open houses and networking events and pay for Facebook ads and do all this stuff that people do to try to create the list. I'm just going to get the list right now. Just give me the list right this second of the exact people I want to do business with and I'll go ahead and have the conversations now. I want to succeed now. I want to get to the thousands of conversations now so you can get to the million years so you can move on to the next step and the next step and the next step. That's how the less than 1% think. They're not trying to drag this stuff out over time. Once I identify what that one thing is that really moves the needle, boom, it's over. Let me crush this for a couple years and I'll show you what I can do. Love it. You get interviewed quite often. You travel a lot for your speaking engagements and you talk with a lot of those 1% agents. What do you see or what have you heard of some good creative marketing strategies that agents are utilizing right now that you think are like, wow, that's awesome. I look forward to seeing that end result. Creative marketing ideas. Or are those just going back to basics? Guys, I'd be honest with you. You guys tell me what a creative marketing idea is for agents because if the, okay, here's a marketing idea, Ricky. What's the objective of this marketing idea? What am I trying to do? What's the goal with this marketing idea? Get all these people and hearing and get all this attention and do this and that. Then what? I guess I'm going to call them. While you're doing all that to try to get to the point you're calling, I'll be over here in the other office just calling people and just doing deals. It's like people that spend time putting important data into CRMs or updating their CRM and spending all this time doing that. While they're doing that, I'm going to go over here and close a bunch of deals. You got to thank guys. Time goes by so fast and it compounds so quickly. Let's just say you spend 30 minutes a week on something. Just 30 minutes a week on something that you feel like whatever. I'm going to put in the CRM, nobody cares that you remember their dog's birthday, their birthday, when they bought the house, blah, blah, blah, blah. That isn't really where the needle is moved. Where the needle is moved is that when they talk to you, they feel like you're treating them like family, number one. Number two, when they interact with you and that you have an encounter, whether it's them doing a deal or just inquiring about something, that you go above and beyond with the service side of it and just make them feel so special. That's what moves the needle. If this is where I'm at and I'm going to spend 30 minutes a week in putting data into a CRM, you got to think that's 26 working hours. Think about it for a second. This is just a half hour a week that we think is, oh, it's just a half hour a week. Now, that's 26 hours in a year. You know how much damage you can do in 26 hours? Oh my God. That could be the difference in your business doubling, literally doubling if you invested that time wisely, but we don't. We throw time away all day long. We're throwing time away that is so valuable and we don't realize it because if we spend 30 minutes doing something that doesn't move the needle, we're like, that's just 30 minutes. And if you spent that 30 minutes doing that, does it change your business? No. If you spent that 30 minutes doing something that would change your business, does your business change that day? No. So we can't see the results that day, but over time as it compounds, oh my God, you look back and you think, wow, let's now think about an hour a week. That's 52 hours, an hour and a half. We're talking about, I mean, it gets really crazy when you think about it. I mean, just think about the time that people are spending just scrolling on social media. It gets wild. And I think about all these things because I'm a super, I want super hyper growth in my business now. And these are the things that get you there is understanding these little things about, okay, what's the one thing that moves the needle? Oh, conversations. What about time that we're spending here? That's why when I sit down with an agent and dissect their business and, you know, try to help them figure out where they could be more efficient and actually double and triple their business over the next 12 months, it's so easy because most agents are investing time and stuff that doesn't move the needle. And it's easy to say, listen, that doesn't do anything. And here's why. Let's invest that time here and you'll easily triple up just this one change, you know? I don't know. What was the question? I love it. No, I think you kind of answered the question. You don't need to worry about that. You know, as we kind of melted into the new year, we see some uptick and the fires with the rates kind of coming down. We see some more listings on inventory. Over here, we are still seeing a massive shortage and a lot of buyers still on the fence because they are waiting for those rates to just plummet like they want that they're hoping to have. We know that that's not going to happen. We all are here because we understand that anywhere between a five to six percent interest rate is actually a healthy interest rate. But how do we as agents communicate that effectively for those buyers who are still waiting, who really the waiting game business is going to be on their side? How do we continue to educate them and effectively kind of get into their head that, hey, if we can get you into a home at a good price, maybe get some seller concessions to help buy down the rate or so forth. Now is a good time to buy. Well, I mean, it goes back to, we're real estate agents, so that's always a good time to buy, right? We get stereotyped into that and low inventory, okay? This goes right back to what I was saying with creating your own demand and creating your own supply and demand. You should be out there building your own market within your own business. But listen, if you've got, you know, I mean, does everybody, does anybody, you guys want to close one deal a week? Or where's you guys' ambition level? Is anybody doing 100 deals on the call? Or, you know, if you want to close one deal a week, you need 15 to 20 active buyers and sellers, right? Outside of that, I'm not trying to get someone to do something. Listen, I have a different approach with this. I'm not trying to twist someone's arm or get in their head or get them to, you know, see the light or any of that stuff. I let people do what they want to do when they want to do it. You know, a lot of times agents handle objections and try to kind of fight against what this buyer seller is trying to do. Guess what that's doing? It's creating distance. It's creating friction. It's creating resentment on their side for, is this person actually looking out for my best interest here? Like, I want to wait. Why are they trying to get me to do something so bad? Well, I know why they're making a commission, but, you know, I don't like this, right? That's the kind of thing that starts to happen behind the scenes when we start trying to, like, get people to move on the deal. I think it comes back to a volume game, whereas if you've got the amount of people in your, you know, ecosystem that are, that have said, I'm going to do something soon and quite possibly you're going to be our agent, you don't have to worry about trying to get people to do stuff. You're busy closing deals. It's a volume game. So when we get into the, we only working with four or five people, right? And we're trying to get them to do something. The reason we're trying to get them to do something is we don't have enough deals going on. So we need a deal. So we're trying to get somebody to do a deal. Don't play that game. Have 15 to 20 or even more. I closed two deals a week for eight years in a row. Two deals a week, eight years in a row as a single agent, no buyer's agent, no listing agent, no, nothing, just an assistant that handled all the paperwork, MLS stuff, and me, I did all the listing appointments, closings, showings, negotiations, all that stuff. Now, if I can do it, I grew up roofing houses in Alabama. All right. If I can do that, every single person on the call can do that. It comes down to a matter of efficiency. So again, it's a volume game. If you're working the volume game, then you don't have to worry about trying to get people to do stuff. You're closing deals. Does that make sense? I mean, does that help you guys? I've never tried to like talk somebody to do something. Now, I always believe that it's 95% low pressure, 5% high pressure. Okay. So think about that for a second. 95 low, 5 high. So what that means is, it wasn't that I never did apply pressure. I applied pressure, trust me, but you got to know when to apply the pressure, right? And a lot of times on the front end, trying to get them to make the first step, for me, was never a point where I wanted to apply pressure. I want them to take that first step on their own. Where I like to apply pressure is when they're four or five steps deep into the process, and now they're kind of thinking about which way they want to go. That's when I'm going to apply the pressure and say, hey, you need to go ahead and cross the finish line here for these reasons. So I think we need to be careful. This is just me talking, and I'm not the god of it, or I definitely take it with a grain of salt. But I want to apply pressure right at the right moment when it's needed. And I'm their friend. I'm trying to help them through this situation. And again, sometimes we force people into stuff, and guess what? It was a bad move. Now what? There's been times where I had listing appointments and the sellers are like, you think we should do this? I'm like, no. I don't think you should sell right now. Why did I not think that? Because why they were selling didn't make sense. I was like, no, I think you should just kind of hang out for a second. They didn't have to sell. It was like one of these things. It was several, several times. And I got lucky because, and they're like, we never heard an agent say that before. And I was like, yeah, well, I mean, I'm just telling you, like, if you're my mom or dad, this is what I would say. And they didn't sell. And then eight months later, they did, and they made way more money than would have they just sold it then. You know, think about it like this. If this were my mother or father, what would I say? If this was my mom, would I do a listing presentation? Probably not. So why am I doing it to this prospect? I want to treat them like they're my mom. That's the way I think about the business. And that goes, I mean, you preach about relationship over transaction and that's, can you kind of curtail on that a little bit more about the importance of that, you know, again, treating people like they're your mom or dad. And that's how you communicate and create that relationship, not just to the end of a transaction, but beyond. Well, when you, when you, to build a massive business, you've got to have this huge network of buyers and sellers that you have lifelong relationships with, lifelong, forever. Okay. Now, now taking it back to mom and dad, you have a lifelong relationship with your mom and dad, right? Same thing. Okay. So these people are like an extended part of your family to a certain extent. I mean, listen, you know, I'm with you. We're not having dinner. We're not, we're not going out hanging out at their house, you know, we're, you know, we're going to draw the line somewhere. But, but in terms of just the overall vibe, right, the feeling that they get when they talk to you is like, look, I am real and I am authentic and I'm here for you and whatever it is you want to do. You don't want to, you don't want to buy or sell now? Awesome. Doesn't matter to me. You want to buy or sell now? Great. Why? Let's get, let's get to work. You know, when I, when I, you know, call a prospect, I'm not calling them to try to sell that property, that expired listing, that for sale by owner, that zillily, I'm not trying to get them to buy the house they inquired about. I'm using the properties and excuse to get into a conversation with them to see if, in fact, there's a working relationship here to see if I can connect with them on a deeper level than just a deal. Because if I can, then oh my God, I probably got a good 20 deals here over the next 10 years. That's, that's how I look at it. And so it all comes down to, this is what you all should do, especially if you're having a hard time communicating. If you, the next time you talk to someone that's really close to you in your life, you know, your mom, your dad, your brother, your cousin, your best friend, one of the agents in the office, your broker, whoever it is, somebody that you're really, really comfortable with. I want you, in the middle of that conversation, I want you to, I want you to end your subconscious think as you're talking back and forth. I want you to think about how relaxed you are, the speed of your voice. I want you to take note of the speed of your voice, the tone of your voice. You know, the whole, the whole, I want you to take a mental snapshot of yourself in that moment, how your shoulders are relaxed, the whole thing, your body language. And I want you to think yourself, wait a minute, this is exactly what Ricky was talking about. When I'm talking to Susie that I've known for 15 years, I'm just very comfortable, right? The object is to get people to feel comfortable with you. That's the only way they're going to do business with you. How do you make them feel comfortable with you? By being comfortable with them. How do you be comfortable with them? You talk to them like, like, if they're Susie, you've known for 15 years. So I want you to take a mental snapshot. I want you to think this is what Ricky was talking about. And I want you to start working on trying to emulate that exact same vibe that you have with somebody you've known forever with your prospects. You know, a lot of times when we talk to people who don't know, the picture from voice raises for octaves and, you know, we sound trembly or whatever it is. No, no, no, no, breathe, relax. You know, and a lot of times people are like, well, I don't go after listings because I'd rather talk to buyers who have seen me online first or whatever. And I'm like, okay, well, how many of these buyers that you've encountered through this have been mean to you or hung up on you or rejected you. And they're like, yeah, I was like, you're the same thing as cold calling. Yeah, but you're lying to yourself saying that these people are different because they supposedly saw you online, but you feel all this confidence because of that. I was like, why can't you just pretend like these people, you can actually make it to where they do see you online, actually. You can write handwritten letters where they probably call you first. You're calling with situations. Hey, I have a great property you might want to upgrade to. I've got a great rental property. I've got a buyer possibly for your property. Guys, thank you for yourself as volunteer workers doing community outreach to see what it is you can do to help people. You know, how much does a volunteer worker make? Right? Zero. Thank you for yourself like that for just a second. And I'm going to do so much community outreach to see what people in my community need. And I'm going to offer my services as a real estate agent to help these people. You know, 90% of people use a real estate agent. It's their choice. They don't have to. They can sell by owner. They can buy through the listing agent. They can do whatever they want to do, but they choose 90% choose to work with a real estate agent for a reason. They need you. You know, if you're not doing what you need to do to contact people in the community to see what you can do to help them as a real estate agent, you're doing everyone a disservice. The community that needs you, your family because you're not succeeding at the highest level possible to give them the best quality of life. You know, the people, your coworkers and agents want to see you crush it. You're not, you're not doing anybody any good by just sitting on the sidelines, scared to call people when it's in fact, your job. I love it. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So, you know, last year interest rates were always the top of conversation, whether it's agent to agent, buyer, seller to agent. What would you suggest other agents and realtors to do to prepare for the next high interest rate market? You know, we don't know when that's going to happen, but our industry is constantly evolving. We know that we don't have a crystal ball, but we've got to be better prepared. I mean, a lot of us were prepared for this past year. Yeah. Here's the thing though. Like, let's, let's, let's set it aside for just a second because yeah, we want to kind of like get prepared and everything, but, but these kind of conversations, I think we need to clarify what we're talking about because, because closings happen every single day, no matter what interest rates are doing. There's not a day in history that there wasn't an enormous amount of closings. Did it go down a little bit? Yeah. It fluctuates. Could it be 50% or even less than what it was at the peak? Yeah. That can happen. Is it ever going to go to zero? No, sir. Our price is ever going to go to zero. No, sir. And so the point I want to make before we talk about that is, is to let you know what we're talking about with interest rates and preparing for an interest rate hike and all this stuff has nothing to do with your success as an agent at all whatsoever. You can create demand out of the, if interest rates hike that make prices come down, I mean, how many of you have buyers who are waiting on prices to come down? Okay. I mean, if prices were to come down, what kind of market activity would we see? And that's the reason why we won't see prices come down because so many people are just sitting there waiting on that. If it even comes down just a smidge, it's like, you know, it's going to be this massive rush of people into the market. That's why you won't see prices go down this cycle. But as far as like preparing for interest rate, I'll tell you how to prepare for interest rate hike. You build your database and the people that know who you are in the market so big, that you got so much business coming in that if you take a 30%, 40% hit on your 150 deals you're doing every year, it doesn't matter. You've got so many people. It's like, what stage of your career are you in? Are you in the new stage where you're trying to figure out what works best for you? Or have you figured that out and you're in the second stage where you've figured out what works best for you? You're all in and you're just building, right? Are you in the place where you're maintaining that level of income wherever you got up to? Where are you in your career? That means a lot for kind of like preparing and stuff like that. But here's how agents' business normally goes. They come in, they go prospect, they get a bunch of new leads, they do well. Year two, they go get a bunch of new leads and year two, you have some of the leads that they called year one that they got year one, come back and buy year two. So you got a good year going. Year three, they go out and they prospect and they get leads. Now you got leads from year one and year two that compound into year three and the new leads you got year three and you have a pretty good year. And it gets to where you're like, I'm not going to go get new leads. I'm too busy closing all these deals with all these people I've talked to and their income just boop flatlines and they just make two, 300 a year forever. And they never go to 400 or 500 or a million and they're like, I don't know why I can't break through. Well, you quit building your business. Your business is how big your database is. Your database is how many people in your market know who you are, like for real, for real. Like they know you, they've talked to you, they love you, and they never forget you because you do a weekly email. They never forget you. That's how you prepare for a market swing is lifelong relationships. When the market crashed in 08, I lost everything and went homeless, sleeping in my car, roofing houses again, worked on an oil rig, went bankrupt, all that stuff. It was literally because I didn't build a database. I didn't understand it was about lifelong relationships. That's why I went, that's how I learned this. So when I came back, I was like, you ain't going to get me again. And so I started building lifelong relationships and doing a weekly email so nobody ever forgot me. And then boom, my business, I just made more and more money every single year, every single year, all the way to the top. And in 2017 was the first year that a million and then that was the year I quit prospecting. And guess what? I made a million every year after that because I'd built the database up to the million and then you can live off of it. So whatever level of income you build your database up to and then you stop building the database, that's where your level of income is going to plateau. So if you, if you're, if you're prospecting and you build it up to, you know, you make 250 and then you just quit prospecting and you live off that database, hopefully you're doing some kind of weekly email or something like that, the same touch with everybody, then you'll make 250 forever and wonder why you can't get to 350. You got to keep building it up. So I don't know. I think preparing for the market crash is just understanding the principles. Closings happen every day. We got to build our database to the moon. We got to build lifelong relationships. And you know, I really have to worry about much else. You know what I mean? Whatever happens, there's always an opportunity in the market. You know, in 2008, it was foreclosures. You know, I sold a ton of foreclosures and guess what? Those people sold that foreclosure three years later upgraded to something else and referred five people to me. You know, that was a great opportunity. Right now, I think it's literally whoever is kind of working a bunch of off market deals and just really building their database right now while it's slow because like it's kind of slower than normal, right? And so like all this time, extra time we have in our hands, we could literally use that to try to create more relationships with people that don't even want to buy or sell right now. See, people aren't doing this because they're like, nobody wants to do anything. So what's the point? It's like, wait a minute, we're building 2026 right now. You should be talking to as many property owners as you can to build those relationships for your 2026 business. And by the way, if you do that, your 2024 is going to explode. I like that. Thank you. We won't take too much more of your time, my friend, but I wanted to get your insight on what your kind of predictions are, what you're seeing right now moving around in the United States for the market here in 2024. I think we're just going to get back to normal. I think we're on the beginnings of the next like 10 year run for real estate, every 10 years we have a correction. I think the price correction was like March, 2022 to December. I think that little correction of prices was it. We had a massive transaction correction last year and I think we'll just kind of slowly inch back up from here. We may have a double digit appreciation year. We'll just kind of see how that plays out. This year or next year, we could have a double digit appreciation year maybe, but I think we're going to settle into a nice little 3, 4, 5, 6%. And that's national averages too, right? So when you have a 5% national average appreciation year, some markets had double digits. Some markets might have went negative. It's all local. But yeah, I think we're just getting back to pre-pandemic and not even pre-pandemic because 2019 was something. People don't talk about that a whole lot, but I think we're going to get back to an 18, a 17, a 16. I think that's kind of where we're going to settle in at with appreciation and the number of transactions, which makes sense, right? We had this crazy situation and now we're kind of taking a couple years. The dust is settling. We kind of get back to normal. I think that's where we're going to be and just see kind of a slow gradual increase till the next whatever happens, whether it's a crazy war or a pandemic or who knows who knows what's going to happen next. But yeah, I think that's what I'm just like, let me build my database to the moon. Let me show you guys how to make a million bucks real quick over the next three to five years and whatever happens with the market is on you guys. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't let the market play too much. I've got one more question for you. Like I said, we're all here. We're all kind of individual agents. The mastermind group that we participate in are all about being a good teammate and how to be a good teammate to other agents of the other, the transaction and how that benefits our clientele, closing and beyond. Can you give us just a little intake about the benefit of being a good teammate? Just kind of, well, you know, as we go into 2024. Well, I mean, agents are, agents are almost like, I mean, they're almost more valuable than clients. I mean, they're selling your listings. You're selling their listings. You work with them on multiple deals a year. They could come to you with off-market opportunities, buyers or sellers. They could come to you and say, I have this pocket listing. You won't let me list it. And you may have a buyer. I mean, you know how many deals I sold like that? You know, agents office would come to me because they knew that I was just crushing, talking to property owners. They'd be like, I have this buyer. I can't find this property for him. Like, I got you. Let me see what I can do. And we sold so many properties like that that never even hit the market. But there's two things. There's the fact that through the deal, you not only want to go above and beyond for the client, but you want to go above and beyond for the agents. You know, you want them to feel like, man, and like this was a reputation I had in my market. Ricky is so great to work with. Right? I heard it a bunch. You know, everybody says you're so great to work with because I always went above and beyond for not only my client, but the agent on the other side answering my phone, making sure they had everything they needed. You know, everything. Why? Because that's number one. That's how I would want them to be with me. And because I was like that with them, that's how they were with me. It just makes deals go so much smoother. You got to think like if you need something from the other agent to make a deal like, you know, smooth that when that happens, that means the deal is going smooth for your client. And if you don't have a great relationship with these agents, sometimes it could be. And listen, we all have agents that we hate, right? We all got those agents that are just you know, clowns. Let's just call them. But don't answer their phone and they don't do what they're supposed to and, you know, disappear and do all this crazy stuff and say weird things and stuff. But you got to love them. You know, you got to love them. And I never burned a bridge with an agent, even if they kind of did me dirty or did me wrong. I never, you know, maybe one time or something out of 20 years, I might have said something to an agent. But for the most part, I'll add a lot of stuff slide under the rug, you know, because I didn't want to burn those bridges because you never know when your client, your future client wants to buy one of a listing that they have or something, you know, and you're going to need that relationship. But most agents you'll find are good people, you know, they love you back and they want to see you crush it. Then you got the agents that just, you know, they think that there's only so many deals to go around and how dare you send letters to people in my neighborhood. It's like, wait a minute, it's not your neighborhood, you're just a real estate agent. You don't own any of the houses, all right? And you know, and those neighborhoods too that these dominant agents are in, it's a big opportunity for you guys because number one, other agents are scared to try to, you know, mark it in those subdivisions because they're scared of that one dominant agent. And, but there's all kinds of owners in there that don't like that dominant agent. So there's less people trying to hit that subdivision. And there's plenty of people in there that want a second option that'll probably be more than glad to talk to you. So don't shy away from those opportunities either. But, yeah, I don't know. Those relationships between agents need to be just as strong or stronger, really stronger than with your clients. Well, thank you so very much. Again, your time is very valuable to all of us. And we're very humbled by the opportunity to sit here and pick your brain. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with us before we let you go, my friend? Does anybody else on the Zoom have any questions or anything I can help you guys with? I think we actually, we have a few agents that are kind of newer on the newer scale. We have somebody on Zoom that is an assistant who's going to get her real estate license here shortly. So is there any tips and tricks you have for those new right agents in the industry? Absolutely. It's a big mindset game. A lot of agents come in and say, I want to sell one a month. And if they don't sell anything after three or four months, they're kind of like, oh, there's no way I'm going to hit my goal. Every single new agent that I've seen, that hit their goal, hit it all in the last six months, that second six months. So I got several new agents. And one guy wanted to do $10 million in his first year. And he didn't sell anything in his first six months. But guess what? He sold $10 million in his second six months. So he hit his year goal, but it was all kind of lumped into the back half of the year. I mean, it takes a lot of effort to get your business off the ground, get some momentum going and everything else. So don't get discouraged when you don't sell anything in the first six, eight months even. This is a momentum game. It's a momentum game. And you have to build the momentum and you got to put the work in and you got to go talk to people. That's the name of the game is talking to people. If you're not doing something that results in a conversation with a possible buyer or seller, you're just not doing any good. You're just kind of standing still. So just focus on activities that get you there. Don't get discouraged when you don't sell anything in a couple of months. We've all been there. It's totally normal. And have fun with it. Don't put so much pressure on yourself. If you got in the business to do it for, say, 30 years, who cares if it takes you a couple of years to get this thing figured out? You still got 28 years to crush it, right? So just have fun with it and try not to put too much pressure on yourself. And definitely don't compare yourself to other people. That's the most dangerous game in the world. This isn't a race. There's no race. There's what makes you happy. I got agents that want to make 200,000 a year. That's all they ever want to make. And I got agents that want to make 2 million a year. And everything in between. Everybody has different values and ambition levels and stuff. So be careful. It's a mind game. Is there anybody else on Zoom that has a question before we let them go? Awesome. Well, thank you so very much for your time. Again, we can't be more than appreciative of you and being able to share your thoughts with us. I mean, we're all going to be leaving here even more motivated to be a great teammate and also kind of go back to the basics like you were talking about. Just, you know, those relationships of our transactions and just being that person for everybody that you get to talk to. So yes, thank you again. Absolutely. And send my coaching, my coaching platform out to the team, zero to diamond.com. You guys can go there and get all my free scripts, my email templates for the weekly emails on there for free business planning session. You can DM me there on the platform. So you guys can find me there at zero to diamond.com. And we do weekly calls as well, weekly coaching calls. We did live calls being chained. We did luxury expired calls yesterday, went back and forth and called luxury expires. So we do a lot of stuff in there. But yeah, yeah, I'd appreciate it if you guys went there and checked it out and let me know what you think and grab those scripts and everything else and see if there's something there that can help you in your business. Yeah, I think we all follow you on every social media platform that you're on and probably snag as many scripts and stuff that you offer every week. So thank you again for your investment into our industry because you and other people like yourself make want to make us better. We want to be better for our clients as well. So thank you. And your family and the other agents. I mean, everybody wants to see you guys. So I hope something I said hit home or, you know, helped you a little bit in some kind of way. So that's my hope today. And I appreciate you guys. So we'll talk to you soon. Yeah. Thank you so very much, Ricky. Take care. See you guys.