 In 2011, I started to try to build one of these teams and my thing was if you don't sell anything in six months, you're off the team and I'm thinking, well, I would have fired myself. You know, getting ready, you know, going to work and then doing whatever the process is there. I mean, we can get into the specifics of what to do, but I mean, until you're actually, you know, partaking and having a routine in place, there's nothing really to talk about. That's kind of like people that say, you know, what content do I post to grow on social media? And I go to their page and they post like twice a month. It's like, well, until you start posting every, until you start posting every day, you know, we don't even need to talk about what we're posting until you're, you know, posting consistently, you know what I mean? So like, there are steps in the process. So let me make it clear until you've actually, you know, formed a real routine that you've stuck to and you've proved yourself that you're disciplined in any kind of capacity, then we don't even need to talk about what to do because you're not doing anything. Because if you're not going to be consistent with what anything, you know, that's what I say, just find something to focus on. If you're consistent with anything, then something's going to happen. You can actually, you know, social media isn't the common denominator because there's agents that, that have closings without social media. I'm one of them, by the way, no cold calls is not the common denominator because there's people that close deals and do very well without cold calls. You know, Zillow's not the common denominator. Open houses aren't the common denominator. Direct mail isn't the common denominator. The common denominator is a real conversation until there's a real conversation, regardless of where you get your leads from, until that conversation takes place and you've actually, you know, established that there is a connection and we do feel comfortable with you enough to do business, you know, nothing's going to happen, right? So that's the common denominator. So from that point, then we reverse engineer, okay, you know, is cold calling our thing that's going to get us to conversations. Is social media the thing we want to use to get us to the conversations? What avenue do we want to use to get us to those conversations? And so my thing is, is I want to, I want my agents to make calls between nine and 12 every day. So who are they going to call? Why don't care who they call as long as whatever lead generation source they're using is giving them enough leads to make calls back to back to back every day from nine to 12. People are spending so much money on Zillow and Facebook and so much time creating content and doing open houses and all that. You know, if all that's just coming right back to the same activity, which is talking to people on the phone, I say the heck with all that, I'm just going to get the exact property owners I want to do business with for two cents a piece and just call them directly by the thousands. It took me eight months to make my first sale. Funny thing is when I, in 2011, I started to try to build one of these teams. And my thing was, if you don't sell anything in six months, you're off the team. And I'm thinking, well, I would have fired myself, right? I would have fired Ricky, you know what I mean? Like Ricky wasn't good enough to be on my team kind of deal. But you know, here's the thing when new agents come in, the way that I try, I have a new agent process that I take them through. And one of the biggest things is setting their expectations of the business because what happens is they come in and they're overly excited of this new opportunity and venture that they're in here. It's just like, you know, skies the limit. It's just, this is a crazy good opportunity. So many people are making millions and they get in, they're riding this emotional high. And then after a couple of weeks, they realize, wow, there's this mountain of knowledge and I'm not going to learn it all in one day. And they become a little bit frustrated, you know, and they start to come off that high. And the next thing you know, they didn't make a sale for three months. And then they become very disappointed. And that little bit of lack of confidence really hurts them on their tone. It hurts them, you know, just being able to, you know, make someone feel comfortable with them. They're in their lack of confidence. You know, your number one job as a real estate agent, your number one skill set should be to make someone feel comfortable with you. Because if they don't feel comfortable with you, they're not going to do business with you. You're not going to get to the appointment, to the showing, to the contract, to the offer, to the closing table. None of that's going to happen. The number one skill needs to be, can you make people feel comfortable with you? If you can do that through your tone, your body language, the words you're saying, your intentions, then you've really got something, your confidence, you've really got something to work with. Then you move over to, okay, what's our biggest objective as a real estate agent, right? Because most people are like setting appointments, closing deals, getting clients. No, it's data collection. You know, January 2022, you need to be thinking about 2025. You know what I mean? So for me, like you can't control the results this year. When I look at an agent, I can't tell you what they're going to do, what their production level is going to be this year. But if you show me what they're doing day to day, I can tell you exactly where they're going to be three, four, five years from now. That's very predictable. Like the long term is very predictable. Like it's just simple math, which Juan and I have realized people, not a lot of people can do simple math. It's very simple math and it's a game of accumulation over time. That's what creates big businesses. I was the same way. I know exactly what you're talking about. Because when I was doing 600k a year and then 750 and then a million a year, when I hit a million that first year, the next year is like, golly, I got a deal. Like I literally, you know, January 1, you start at zero. You went from a million, you went from a million to zero. It's like, what? I have to do that over again. Like is that really going to happen the second time? But we all go through that. And when you go through that next year, after having a really big year and you do produce that same volume or, you know, very close and then you do it a third year and then a fourth year, you know, you just kind of, you understand that, yes, you can do it. Most social media platforms is like two or three or four or five percent organic reach. Email is a 90% organic reach, which means 90% of the people in your database will see that email in their inbox. What do you want to build your foundation of your brand on? A 90% organic reach platform or a two, three, four, five percent organic reach platform? And you control that platform. It's like social media, they can change an algorithm. Now you got to, you know, you got to spend money. So people that follow you, see your content. I mean, come on. It's just, it's not, you know, like you're, I'm not saying don't do social media. I'm saying the foundation of it should be a weekly email and then sprinkle the social media on top of that. Right? So when you do a weekly email every single week on the same day of the week forever, and it has your two cents on stuff, your opinions, market information, local restaurants, local stuff, then they, they, they start to realize that you're a force, you know, you're an expert, you're, you know, you, you know, they start to realize, okay, this person is consistent, hardworking, dependable, honest, professional, you know, they know what's going on the market. They're selling stuff, you're doing a little self promotion. No, absolutely not, man. Email is, I mean, and look, I know it would be like the, you know, the complete foundation. See tech, Texas is a different animal, right? So, so right now the reason why, like there's businesses that are moving into text, like I'm, I'm using text on my business. And, you know, but I, I, I'm very selective with how I use it, you know, um, you know, because it's still a very intimate place where mostly friends and family, you know, you started getting spam there, then, you know, you know, where you're going to go to really stay in touch with your, you know, friends and family at that point where you don't feel like you're going to get spammed with a bunch of stuff, you know, and we're all starting to get spammed with some stuff via text message. So, um, no, it's, it's another very high organic reach area. That's why people are gravitating to that. They know what people's attention is on their phones and text messages is normally from mom and dad. And so they're looking at every text message that comes through so that you know that they know they have your attention when they text you. Um, so no, it's a different animal then. It's kind of like saying, okay, you know, well, I mean, emails been around since whenever the 80s, 70, when, how long has it been around? I mean, it's been around for a long time and social media came along. It didn't wipe, it didn't wipe email out, right? And I mean, we still have phone numbers, you know what I'm saying? Like, so and those were created back and whenever. So like, no, I just think it's gonna be a different avenue. It's kind of like, it's kind of like Instagram didn't replace Facebook, right? Or YouTube, you know, um, you know, all these platforms all exist. Yeah, I think you gotta be selective, you know, because, you know, sometimes the story will give off the wrong impression, you know, it's just like, it's like, I don't necessarily want to advertise that, you know, hey, you know, I'm getting, you know, 12 offers per listing, you know what I mean? Because the seller is like, well, what do we, you know, I'll just sell it by owner or something of that nature, which, which I'm fine with that, by the way. And I don't mind telling them the truth. But at the same time, um, the stories I like to, what I'm getting at is the stories I like to tell are more so here's a restaurant. I went there with my wife. We had a great time. We had this. It's amazing. You guys should check it out kind of deal. You know, I told a story in this week's email that I sent out about, you know, because we're about back to my, a lot of markets have hit their peak and kept going from where it was back in 0405. My market is just getting back to the peak right this second. And so I did, uh, I did a little, you know, storytelling on, you know, my experience with that market and that we're back there price wise, but there's a lot of differences and it kind of illustrated a story, you know what I mean? So no, and look, look, I mean, look at my coaching program, you know, all my stories there, as far as what I've been through and everything that's helped me build that business and that brand. So storytelling is huge, huge. If you're telling a story, people are so interested in that kind of stuff. When you're just telling just like general information, like prices are up this much, or here's a square foot price or something like that. It's like, you got to say that and then say your thoughts about it. I have zero interest in, in 2021. You know, it's like, it's like in 2022 gets here and I'm like, okay, this is, it's already in the books this year. Like whatever you produce this summer comes from the work you did last fall. So what, so it's kind of like my dad said, we don't wear roofing houses, you know, we get paid every Friday. And so like these, these guys that work for us, they literally would not show up. And then Friday morning, here they come, they're ready to roll, they're, they're coming in, they're, they're ready to go and they come in and work for one day and get paid. You know, and my dad was like, look, you ain't been here all week, you ain't gonna get it done now. You know, it's the same thing. If you didn't, if you didn't really bust it back in the fall and in the spring to build those relationships and get that database up. When I, in my book, zero to diamond, there's a chapter called champions are made in the off season. Right. And then this is a, this is a method that I used every year to increase my income every year, every year, because we have a slow season and a busy season. So I took the, the busy season and just closed deals based on the database I built during the slow season. And then the slow season comes and I switched from a, from, from deal closing and showing property and going to appointments to, okay, it's slowed down. Now I use all that time to call, call, call, call, call and try to build more relationships to build my database, incrementally bigger. So it's a stair step. So every year my database has a little, it's flat because I'm just helping close deals, but then I have a jump because I'm slow. So I added people to it. So now I go into the next busy season with more people.