 So, I don't know about you guys, but today's lineup has been lit, right? Are we almost ready for Ricky to come out? Yep. So, for the man that needs no introduction, welcome to the stage, Ricky Karuth. You're a mic up there? What's up, San Antonio? How we doing? Hey, how about the speakers today? Right? Just point, point after point, after point, after point. I don't, I didn't even see anybody go to the bathroom. Did anybody go to the bathroom? There was no bathroom breaks. Everybody was glued in, right? Now, let's thank Alina Mortgage for this incredible venue that they let us use for free. They let us use this, this facility for free, right? So, I want to give a big shout out to them. Thank you guys so much. And also, the sponsors in the back. They also, they all set through into this to make this happen, right? They're the reason why we have the live stream going, all these other things. So, definitely support our sponsors, right? Big shout out to Alexa, who puts all my events together. She works extremely hard each zero to diamond event. We're going to Phoenix next. We're going to Orlando, Gulf Shores next year. We're going to do four really big ones in big cities. Also, I want to give a shout out to my biggest fans, my wife and daughter, Karlyn and Whitley. They go everywhere with me. She's, my daughter's two and a half. She's been to Disney four times. She's been to LA, Manhattan, skiing in the mountains, Puerto Rico, Miami, Connecticut, Salt Lake. I can't even tell you every place she's been because I don't even remember. She's only two and a half. So, we'll see, we'll see what happens. She may be, oh no, she's going to be the next greatest thing. My wife thinks she's a prodigy, that's for sure. Oh man, listen, I'm so happy to be here, bro. So happy to be here. So, let me just start with trying to gauge here because I can imagine that you guys came here today because you want to become that next better version of yourself, right? You're looking for that golden nugget, right? That one little piece you can take away and take back to your business. If you're new, you're probably looking for a way to just get to that first sale. If you're an experienced agent, you're probably trying to say, okay, how do I get from 150 to 500? How do I get from 350 to a million? If you're a team leader, if you're a broke grown, you're probably trying to figure out, how do I bring the most value to my agents, right? How do I expand my brokerage, my organization, right? And so, I mean, basically when it all comes down to it, I think that, and you guys, let's just get a show of hands. How many people here know what they need to be doing? Okay, now keep your hands up, keep your hands up, okay? Now keep your hands up. If you know what you need to be doing, but you're not doing it. Okay, bingo. That's the problem right there. We know what we need to be doing. This stuff's not rocket science. The problem is we're not executing. That's it. Execution's the game. The secrets and the strategies and the nuggets, they're everywhere. Take your pick. Everything works. But what are you going to execute on? You know what you need to do. In my mind, okay, and the people who have dominated and will continue to dominate, not only this industry, but every industry, are the progressive thinkers who execute. Progressive thinkers who execute. Now a progressive thinker is one who looks at everything that all the successful people around them have done and how they got there. And they take that data. And then they take the data of what's worked for them. Right? And they take all that data and they say, okay, where do I want to be in five years from now? Where do I want to be in five years? What do I want my life to look like in five years from now? And then they take all that data and they say, okay, here's my daily routine. Here's my weekly routine. Then I can visualize this weekly routine getting me where I want to be in five years. That's what a progressive thinker does. He's thinking ahead, not about this year. I want to do that this year. I don't care what you want to do this year. I need to know what you want to happen in five years, what you're doing now, so that I can help you restructure your daily and weekly routine around that. That's what a real mentor does. So take a second. Let's take one moment. Let's all close our eyes. I want you guys to visualize your perfect life in five years, the exact life that you want, the exact business that you want, your family life, your relationships in and without side your family, where you live, what you're doing, how much money you make. What is that perfect life in five years? This is what we need to be thinking about. Think about it for a second longer. Visualize yourself in five years. Now, open your eyes. Now, what I want you to ask yourself is what you're doing day to day, lining up with what you want to happen in five years? That's the question that we need to answer before we can even go any further here. I don't know what I want to do in five years. That's step one, ladies and gentlemen. If you want to be a progressive thinker who executes because we've got a game plan, right? So if what you're doing day to day, if you're lost, if you're weakly daily routine, you're like, I don't know where this is taking me. You need to restructure your daily and weekly routine. And if you don't know what that looks like, you need a mentor that can help you put that together because you need to be able to visualize how you're going to get from point A to point B. That's just the end of the story. Make some noise. I'm going to tell you a story about Bob. Bob's a real person, by the way. He was, he is, he's a hero to me in the real estate world, right? So this is a guy I looked up to for a long time and went to him about all kinds of things. So when I went to my last brokerage in 2010, Bob was there. He had his own big office, okay? Worked every single day he was in that office. A wealth of knowledge. He was in his late 70s. He'd been in the game for 40 years. He moved from a different area and had been there for 10 years or so. And I would go into his office frequently. He saw me as, he was proud, right? He saw me as this up and coming guy. Because at the time, I was literally making 150,000 a year or something. It wasn't like I was on fire yet, right? This was early days. And he was just amazing. You could go in there and feel comfortable talking to him about anything, your deals, your problems, what the market's going to do, strategies, how to talk to people. And he was just somebody that we really adore. One day, we got the news. He's going to die. Right? And it hit us really hard, you know? Bob's going to die. And we thought, man, you know, that's tough. The next day after I hear that, I come into the office and I walk through the hallway and there's Bob in his office calling expires and for sale by owners. The next day, I think, what's going on here? The next day I come to the office, I don't say anything to him the first day. The next day, there he is again. I'm thinking, what's the deal? Right? If I heard I was dying soon, I would be doing all that bucket list stuff, spending time with my family, right? Hanging out with my loved ones, going on vacations. Whatever I wanted to do before I died, I would be doing that. Not calling expires. But that's what Bob was doing. And I couldn't wrap my head around it. And me and my broker at the time were still very close. Even closer than, of course, walking to his office all the time and talking to him. And I said, Patrick, what's the deal with Bob? He closed the door and he said, well, he's trying to work as hard as he can to make as much money as he can to leave his wife when he passes. Right? And it hit me like a ton of bricks that this man is literally going to make phone calls and call expires and for sell-by-owners till the day he dies. And I thought, that's not how I want to live my life. So he made calls all the way until three days before he passes away, where he was too sick to get out of bed, he passed away. And he passed away an incredibly amazing, giving, loving person who will have the utmost respect for, especially for what he did in his last few days, because he just wanted to leave something behind for his wife. Wow. But my question is, is that what you want to have to call expires and for sell-by-owners until the day that you die? The problem, looking back on it, was that he wasn't a progressive thinker. He wasn't thinking five years out. This is what I want my life to look like. This is what my routine needs to be. He wasn't building a brand. He wasn't accumulating relationships like I'm trying to teach you guys to do. He was a great salesperson. When you're in sales, you go sell something. After that sale, what do you have to do? Go back and sell again and again and again and again until the day you die. However, if you're in the accumulation business, if you're in the personal branding business, if you're in the relationship business, if you're a marketer and you understand the best of both worlds of, let me be a great salesperson and give the best service, but also never let this person ever forget who I am. We're going to be a great salesperson. Don't forget who I am regardless if they buy or sell or not and build my database to the point that I don't have to make calls anymore. See, it's a communication game and an accumulation game. Write that down. It's communication and accumulation. That's the secret because if you can articulate who you are as a person that you care about people and they feel that in the first few words that you say to them, that skill takes years to develop, by the way. A lot of people make calls for one month or two days or a couple of weeks and they're like, this ain't working. Dude, it took me 15 years to dial this in. Get back on there. Oh, well, I'm going to go by leads. Fine, I don't care what you do. Go talk to people. Doesn't matter how you do it. I'm trying to show you a better way, but go find your own way. I had to learn everything the hard way. But once I learned it, that was it. I'm the kind of person, as soon as you teach me something one time, you will never have to tell me that again. I got it. Accumulation and communication. What I'm trying to teach you, what I'm trying to show you, not only through my words and my content and what I'm trying to convey to you guys today, but also through example. I made 100,000 calls, built my database to the point that I was making a million dollars by 2017. And then what? I never made another call ever again. And I still made the million dollars every year. See, there's light at the end of the tunnel with this stuff. I'm not telling you to go make calls till you die. I'm telling you that there's no other way to build your business other than to talk to people and that you better be accumulative. Since you're talking to them, you're spending the time talking to them, why not create the relationship for the rest of your life with them and be their agent forever with as many people as you can and have systems around your communication, systems around speed and agility, systems around accumulation and marketing in the back end where no one ever forgets who you are. Let's see how loud you guys can get for one second. Please. That's not loud enough. Listen, I'm not, I don't want to show of hands, but just to yourself, how many of you every once in a while, maybe you're going through it right now, feel frustrated, disappointed, down, lack of confidence, maybe you're not good enough, self doubt, a lot of us. And if we're not now, we will tomorrow. It's called being human. And what I want you to know is with all transparency, I go through it all the time. I have high highs where I'm on top of the world, wow, wow, wow. And then something happens or there's something, right? Maybe in burnout, maybe this happened, maybe somebody was mad, maybe I don't know, maybe I didn't hit my goals when I wanted to hit them. I don't know, but something will happen but something will happen and I'll start to backtrack and say, wow, am I good enough? And now I'm, now I'm got lack of confidence. Now I'm not as confident. Now I'm tiptoeing. Now I'm doubting myself. We all go through that. I don't care who you are, what you say. We all go through the same exact cycles. There's no way around it. So this is what I want you to do. Since it's human nature and it's something that happens and as a new agent, it's worse because you come in on a high high. I'm excited. I got my license. I'm going to make a million dollars. This is an unlimited potential. I'm on boss now. I can do what I want to do. I can set my own hours. I'm going to go crush it. And then they're on this high high and then what happens? A couple weeks later, frustration, mountain of knowledge you can't learn in a day. Then a couple months later, no sales, working their ass off, disappointment. Every agent goes through the same thing. Then you say, okay, wait a minute. This is harder than I thought. Okay, but everybody else is doing it, so I know I can do it. I'm going to make it happen. So then you come back on a high, but it's not as high as the first high because you know what's around the corner. And then you go through frustration and disappointment again. It looks like your first year looks like this. And then you start to balance out your two. But then when you hit 150 and you plateau out on your income and you can't hit 350 the next year, you start to say, am I not good enough? Why can't I do this? It's the human nature of an ambitious person. If you're here today, I would imagine you're a very ambitious person. You're trying to figure out what that next best version of yourself is. So my question is, is if we're always trying to be that next best version of ourself, then is what we're actually telling ourself is that our current version is not good enough? And we got to be the next best version? Or we're not going to proceed forward with our goals and our dreams? No. See, this is a dangerous game to play, but we can't help it. We're going to go through this. Right? And I go through it constantly. As you guys can imagine, I'm always trying to get better. So comes a point. Well, what about me? Tomorrow, Ricky's going to be great. But yesterday, I'm better than yesterday's Ricky. Let me be great for a second, Rick. This is what I want you to do when you hit these points. Number one, message me and tell me about it. Shoot me a message on Instagram. Is anybody here ever messes me on Instagram and not got an answer? Because I answer every single message myself. It's an assistant doing that. No. I want you to message me and say, here's what I'm going through, man. I'm going to say, cool. Well, this is what I think. That's what's going to happen. But here's the second thing I want you to do. I want you to take a step back and take a deep breath and think about everything you got to be grateful for. I think, man, look at my family. Man, look at our life. Man, look at our businesses. Look at our house. Look at our cars. Look at our... We still got our parents, our child. I got you guys. I think about you guys all the time. And I think, man, thank you. And now I'm feeling better about myself. And my confidence starts to come up. And now I feel on top of the world again, like I can go out and accomplish anything. We all have something to be grateful for. I was doing a Zoom call with a brokerage earlier this week in Arkansas. It was about 18 agents. I did my thing and afterwards the broker... Well, I was doing Q and A and the broker of the company said, well, Ricky. He's from Arkansas. What do you do when you got a new agent and they're not making calls like they should? They know what they need to do. You just ain't doing it. What do you do, Ricky? That's exactly how he said it. How do you motivate them types? And listen, before he finished his question, my mouth was already opening. And I replied before he finished the question. And I said, tell him to get a job for two reasons. One, he might not be cut out for real estate. And he's probably going to need that job. But number two, when he starts to look at the differences in making calls versus making hamburgers. Making calls versus making coffee. Making calls versus making beds. Cutting grass, roofing houses. Do you guys understand how good you have it? You sit in an air-conditioned room. Okay? You sit right here in an air-conditioned room and you do this. You move your fingers a little bit, right? And then with the dialers and stuff, you don't even do this anymore. You're not even using your bicep. You put in an earpiece and you just do this. You're just working this muscle and these muscles, right? See this muscle? See how big it's getting? That's the muscle right there you're working. And then this muscle right here, that's it. That's all you do. And you call people in your market and you say, hey, how are you doing? I'd love to get to know you. What's going on with you? How are you? What's going on in your life in terms of real estate? What can I do to help you there if anything? If nothing, listen, I'd love to stay in touch with you. Laugh, joke, cry. That's your job. And you're complaining and you want to go make hamburgers? Or roof houses? Or be a janitor? You better be grateful for what you got. You better be grateful that you're in real estate. You better be grateful that you're in this industry. This is the name of occupation that's better than this in the world. There's not one. Ladies and gentlemen, this occupation has withstood everything. And it's going to continue to. Why? Because people need us. To help them through the transactions. They can't do it. I don't care what Redfin says. They can't do it on their own. Listen, I can take it a step further. There's countries with no MLS. Can you imagine trying to do your job with no MLS? A lot of you have like this really weird look on your face right now. Like this blank stare like, what? Let me, I can't even compute that. Yeah. Over there, they let eight, they had the seller picks eight agents or 10 or five or 20 agents to list their property and whoever finds the buyer first wins. How would you feel if every listing you were fighting against the other agents to go find the buyer, you're going to lose the whole deal? It's the opposite here. We list a property, put on MLS and then what do you guys do? Oh, go to sleep. You go right to bed. You close your eyes and you make 10, 15, $20,000. See over here, real estate is mailbox money. Over there, you got to work for it or you don't get it. Can you imagine every listing you get? You got to go find the buyer or you don't get the deal. You better appreciate the fact that you're here where you are with the opportunity in this country. Now, believe it or not, I'm just getting warmed up here. You guys ready for this? I want to cover three things. One, my view on the current market. Maybe you can take this with you to better educate your clients, give you a different perspective. What's happening, where we're going, and how to think. The second thing is my six rules for agents through a market shift. Third thing is, teach them how to go get some listings. I want everybody in here to go get five new listings in the next 30 days. Let's go! Says the guy that is not going to get five listings in the next 30 days. The market right now. There's two camps, you guys probably know. I like to call these camps. The one side is the Dave Ramsey camp. Everything's going to be all right. Everything's going to be all right. I went for American Idol one time. The other camp is the Patrick Beck-David camp, is what I'm calling it. Interest rates going to 10%, prices going to crash, it's going to be crazy, prices are going to plummet. It's going to be carnage out there. Our two camps. I'm kind of in the middle, leaning towards Dave. Never been a big Dave fan, but I'm starting to be through this. I like a lot of stuff he's saying right now, because it makes sense. Dave's going on data. Patrick's going on assumption. I'll tell you what both of them are looking at. Patrick is looking at inventory. And he's saying inventory is going to go to the moon. Inventory is going to go to the moon. We're going to have more inventory than we can sell. Interest rates are going to go 10% plus. No one's going to be buying. Everybody's going to try to sell. It's just going to be carnage. That's the data point he's looking at, inventory. All right. Dave, he's looking at demand. He's looking at supply. He's looking at demand. He's looking at houses, new starts. All the data that Alexa showed you guys this morning. Wasn't that amazing? Was that like some eye-opening stuff? Give it up for Alexa for coming up with all that. Dave was an agent back in the 70s. He went through that 1980, 81, 82, 83, all that stuff. When the interest rates went up to 18%, all that crazy stuff. Well, guess what? Prices didn't go down during that. They went up. They went up. Just because interest rates goes up doesn't mean prices come down. If you look at the chart with prices and interest rates, and you see over the years, there's some times where interest rates went up, went down, prices continued going up. The only time you see prices go down was during that 2008 pickup. And that's because, of course, it was a real estate mortgage situation. Right? So he's got real data he's looking at and he's saying, guys, and now listen, I'm not convinced in any form or fashion that there's any kind of massive crash coming. I'm just not convinced of that yet. When I see the data that says, okay, I'm going to be like, okay, I think something might happen here. But up to this point, and listen, recession, recession, recession. Are we in a recession? The GDP was down 1% first quarter. We don't know second quarter yet. 1%. It's got to be down two quarters in a row to be called an official recession. We'll get the numbers shortly, right? But 1%, 1%, that could flop. It could be a positive 1% on the second quarter. It's so close. I don't even know that we're in a recession. Are we in the greatest economy? No, there's a little bit of headwinds, right? But it's nothing major. Now, some big differences in 2008 and now. Does anyone feel like this is a 2008 situation? Thank you. Huge differences, right? And the biggest difference to me is the demand department and the inventory department, right? And now there's a lot of other departments. Housing star, there are a lot of departments. But just the sheer demand, four more million millennials. More, not total, but more millennials than there were generation Xers in 2006, 2007, and all that leading up to 2008. Four more million going into their 30s, prime buying years. That tells me there's going to be a lot of demand. You got people 30 to 40 years old that don't want a house. I don't think so. They want a house. The lending restrictions right now, ridiculous. 40% of homes in the U.S. right now are own free and clear. No mortgage, only 10% adjustable rates, nothing like 2008. The banks did a good job. They, the pendulum swung so far the other direction and we were all like, God, why'd you go so far? Right? And the title companies are like, why'd you do that? But now we're sitting here in this position thinking, thank you for doing that and making things so tough to make sure that we're in a better position the next time we have a market swing. Right? I think right now with the way that we've had so, in my market, because I sell mostly primarily condos, we had 20% less transactions. We had, we're up 70% in inventory. Okay? Prices are up 30% from last year and 3% month over month. Nationally prices went up 3% month over month from April to May. The June numbers aren't out yet. Inventory nationally is at 2.6 months of inventory. Okay? You guys realize five months is a balanced market between buyers and sellers. It's got to get five plus months of inventory to enter into buyer market territory. Do you guys realize how strong of a seller's market that we're in right now? It's ridiculously strong. The problem is we've just went through that phase of the market shifting where the sellers are in denial that they don't want to come down to reality that, well, it's only going up 3% a month instead of 15. Sorry. Let me get you 3% more than what we were getting last month. Can you please be happy? No, I want 15 or I'm not selling, right? But we're coming out of that phase. We're moving out of that phase. And here's what I think we're going to see with the fewer transactions. It's not like the demand went away. It's not like people went away. It's not like people who wanted to buy houses disappeared. They're still there. They just, the interest rates went up there like, whoa. Let me take a step back and figure out what I want to do here. Do I need to get a smaller home? Do I need to just pony up and pay extra? How do I need to handle this? They're trying to figure it out, but the demand is still there. They still want the houses. So in my mind, and this is what happened during the pandemic, right? You guys remember that 45 days shut down, no human-to-human contact, still 80% of the same amount of closings and pending deals. In the middle of that, I did a video. I said, guys, it's still on YouTube. We're about to sell. It's still on YouTube. We're about to see the largest, most incredible real estate surge we've ever seen. And what happened? We saw the largest, most incredible real estate surge that we've ever seen. Why did I think that? Because when you shut down the economy and you have so less transactions during that window of time, it only builds up demand. And now we got pent up demand. Now, I didn't think it was gonna last two years and things were gonna go up 400,000. That's crazy. But I think it's what's happening right now on a smaller scale. Less transactions tells me we've got some built-up demand sitting there in the wings. They wanna do something. And I think this next six months are gonna be incredible for us, for the people that have been out there working instead of pulling back. Oh, nobody's gonna list and nobody's really interest rates. I'm just gonna kind of see what happens. No, you go all in when this happens. When these moments happen, when you build your inventory of relationships during those down moments, that's when you explode when the market rebounds. Last year, we had an inventory crash, right? I would say anything that goes down 50% is a crash. So last year, we had an inventory crash. This year, we're having a transaction crash, right? Why does it have to be prices that make it a crash when we say it's a crash? We're having a crash in different sectors of the market every year. Prices are only gonna adjust to Mother Nature and allow you the opportunity to continue closing deals every day for the rest of your life. Kind of get a hallelujah. My six rules for market shifts for real estate agents. Number one, closing's happen every single day, no matter what, so nothing matters, right? Number two, there's gonna be a three-month bridge. There's always, once we have that shocking moment in the market where everybody takes a step back and takes a deep breath and says, okay, what I wanna do? It's normally a three-month process for everybody to process that. And then we enter into our new normal market where now this is the new normal. During that three-month period, which we're almost to the end of right now from when interest rates first took the hike, a lot of agents, more agents than clients, but clients and agents some are gonna think it's the end of the world. Totally normal. Don't let it freak you out. Rule number three, as the market finds a new normalization, it becomes easier to talk to your clients about the market. Why? Because there's data now. Once three months goes by, four months goes by, five months goes by, you've got data to work with to go to your seller and say, hey, this one is not selling and it's priced exactly where you wanna sell yours. You spend on the market for 250 days and they've had two showings and it's just sitting there. You've got that data to go to them and say, here's what closed, here's what selling, here's days on the market for product exactly like yours. You have the data to go to the seller and say, here, but when it's one month old and it just happened, they're like, oh, this is a fluke, I'm gonna price it 20% higher, but after three, four, five, six, seven months of this, they can't deny it at that point and we're gonna see a lot of these overpriced listings that we're getting now. We're gonna see those listings, the listings that come out in this next batch over the next six months be more reasonably priced. And that's why I thank, ladies and gentlemen, is another reason why I think we're gonna have an incredible six months is because not only have the buyers caught their breath from the interest rate hike, but we're also gonna see some really good inventory come on the market. Because sellers know we're kind of where we wanna be, where a lot of these sellers that have been on the fence, but the crazy part about all the data, when you look at it, prices still doing this. Month over month, 3% nationally, 3% in my market. Prices are still going up and we'll continue. Rule number four, the market sales really slow. Okay, so imagine this. The interest rates went up several months ago. Transactions have come down, but all this stuff is happening in slow motion. It's like you can watch it every day and just see what's happening. Prices are still going up right now. It's all happening in slow motion and we feel like it's just boom, happening all of a sudden, we get, oh God. When really, it's just doing a very slow, mild shift and we're freaking out about interest rates that are still some of the lowest we've ever seen. And by the way, they've went down. They went up to like 5.9 down to 5.1. They're like 5.5 or something today. It's like all the people that were worried about it going out. Now they're gonna hike and is it gonna go up? Sure, everybody believes that. But nobody knows. It was like when they raised the Fed Prime 3 quarters or whatever it was a couple, like last month or whenever it was, it didn't affect mortgage rates. Everybody's like, oh, they're gonna raise it and then boom, it's going to 6%, it's going to 7% and it didn't, it stayed at 5.5. For mortgage rates, it's not directly correlated to the Prime Fed. Number five, as we enter into these shifts, transactions decrease. Transactions are decreasing. I would imagine by the end of the year we're gonna have less transactions this year than last year. Even if we have a great second half and we kind of catch up, I still think we'll be lower. But the more interesting, and again, this is not directly correlated, but a very interesting point that I like to think about is as transactions come down, let's just say, for example, they go down 8%. I believe in that market environment, we're gonna see more than 8% of agents leave the business. I feel like as many transactions as we have that are lower than last year, we'll have more than that percentage of agents leave the business. Again, not directly correlated, but it's something to think about. As we're seeing agents drop like flies right now, like flies, they're running out of the business. Because they got in the business during the pandemic and they say, well, if I couldn't make it while the market was like crazy, the craziest real estate search we've ever seen, how am I gonna make it when interest rates are going up and there's less transactions? I might as well just not do my CEs and pay my fees and go ahead and keep flipping burgers. It's nuts, actually. Right, because there's enough business for each and every one of you. And number six is during a down cycle, and this was just talking about, when we're having less transactions, if you go in harder to create more relationships and build your database up during that time, as the market rebounds, your business explodes like an atomic bomb. This is how I blew up back into the 2008, 9, 10, 11, because I went all in in 2008, 9, 10, 11. 2012 was the first year we saw appreciation. It was doing this. From 2005 to 2011, it did this, prices. 2008's when I got back in real estate, and I went all in. And as the market rebounded, right, so 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, these are years I'm talking about, of me making calls 15 hours a day. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, the market starts coming back, right? 13, 14. 14, I sold 100 properties. And it was literally because of me going all in during 2008, 9, 10, 11, because all those relationships I built, see, here's my theory. I call it closing the gap. You're closing the gap on the market, and you're closing the gap on the other agents in your market, okay? If the market is accelerating and it's expanding, you have to grow your business at a faster rate than the market's expanding to acquire more market share. Make sense? If the market's going like this, and your business is going like this, and it's completely parallel, you're not, you can't catch it. It's always moving out further from you. However, as the market's coming down, and you're building your business, now you're closing the gap on market share in your market. See, market share is not how many closings you did last year compared to the rest of the market, or how many listings you have, or how many appointments, or whatever everybody wants to tell you, okay? Here's market share. How many people, I prefer property owners, how many people in your market do you have a real relationship with that you've talked to, that you re-market to, that love you? That's market share. What percentage of the population knows you, knows who you are, what you do, and that you're here to help? What percentage of the population in your market knows who you are, and has a great feeling about you? That's market share. Whatever agent has the most of that owns the market, period. And so, in a down market, as the market's retracting, if I'm expanding during a retracting market, I'm expanding my market share, and I'm doing it when a lot of agents are leaving the business, and I'm doing it with a lot of the veterans are laying down and riding the storm out. They're not getting it. They're not creating. They're not building. This is a great opportunity. We're gonna see who the future, we're gonna see who the champions are in this room over the next 12 to 18 to 24 to 36 to 48 months. We're gonna see who really wants it, who wants to be that top producer. Hey baby girl, you showing me something on the phone? Oh, got a dog? Let's make some noise for Whitley. All right. So listen, I think regardless of what happens, I think at the end of the day, you guys probably know where I stand that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter for agents, why? Closings are gonna happen every day no matter what. It doesn't matter for investors, why? Because there's always deals. I'm buying a deal right now, 450,000. I own another one on the same street, commercial. The owner, two doors down, big commercial building, saw him the other day and I said, hey, you know, the guy did die that owned the bill. I said, so and so died. He said, yeah, I heard about that. And he said, man, they want to, they want to arm and a leg for that thing. And I said, yeah, I got under contract. He said, what are you doing? I said, well, hold on a second here, Jim. I was like, you know, you're in the construction business. You guys build stuff. How much, what's it gonna cost to build $200? It's a 2,000 square foot property. So it's really, it's really like 2,100, right? But let's just say 2,000 square foot. Well, that's 400,000 right there to build it. Then I got the lot. What's the lot worth, 150, 200? I said, man, as long as I'm buying properties under replacement cost, right? With rent through the roof. And I can make the numbers work on the cash flow analysis. And I'm getting depreciation, appreciation, appreciation, cash flow, and it's paying itself off. You better give me that property. I'm buying right now. Replacement costs, inflation, rent, cash flow, it's still there. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter for sellers. If the market crashes and burns and I have to sell my property, well, number one, I was probably irresponsible in some kind of way. And I'm probably gonna have to restructure anyway. But if I'm an investor and it goes down and I gotta sell, heck, I'm gonna buy at an even cheaper price. Mark is gonna be lower. I'm gonna trade assets for assets at whatever the market is. It's the thing, guys, when you're trading assets for assets, it doesn't matter where the market is. It's all gonna come out in the wash. If you're doing it at the same time. For buyers, listen. I mean, I would say, I don't sound like a real estate agent or anything, but hey, right now is a good time to buy. And I honestly believe that. I honestly believe that. Okay, let's talk about five listings. Do y'all want to get five listings or not? I can skip this part. Okay, not really. I'm just kidding, just kidding. All right, listen, guys. First off, you have to understand, where does a listing come from? Right? You know, it's kind of like, it's almost like I feel like I'm having a birds and the bees kind of conversation with you right now. Where was listings born? How are listings made? But honestly, when you go to a seller at the end of a transaction, you say, hey, how'd you pick your agent? The number one answer is gonna be, I had a friend in the business. I don't care what anybody says. 92.3% of people say that they find their agent online. Well, they found an agent online and they built a relationship with that agent. They might have found them online. You find, I mean, the way that people connect can be a multitude of different ways. But at the end of the day, if you find an agent online, are you just gonna, are you gonna sign a listing with that agent before talking to them? If it's your house, are you gonna sign a listing agreement with an agent that you never talk to, at least on the phone? I mean, I'm gonna meet with them and stuff. I'm gonna do a background check. I'm gonna, well, I hope they don't do background checks on me, but kidding, my record is clean as a whistle. But they pick their agent because they had a friend in the business. So that's the first thing to understand when we're on this journey to figure out how to get listings because they get so many DMs, right? I'm doing buyers. I got all these buyers. I won't get in the listing side. It's like, it's not like this other side, like the dark side or something. It's like, it's the same thing. You just talk to people and help them do whatever they're trying to do. But you have to realize that it's who has the most friends. When you, that seller's gonna say, okay, and sometimes it's between the couple agents and you got to go do your listing presentation. You got to win that business over, right? Especially when you're newer in your career. But going back to when you build your database up to the point that you could walk away from calls anymore, that side of the business is euphoria because 99.9% of the people you do business with during that stage in your career are not interviewing three agents. They're calling one agent, the agent that they've already dealt with, you, or the agent that their friend dealt with and said amazing things about. You, they're not calling another agent. 99.9% of the time, you'll still get a couple where you got to fight for it here and there. But most of them are just calling you and saying, hey, this is what I want to do. And you're like, okay, cool. Writing up a contract, showing a property, making an offer, doing a listing. It gets real, real easy. And so what I'm asking of you, just on that same topic is, give me three to five hard years. Just give me three to five hard years using the technology. To build your database up to the point that you don't have, you never have to prospect ever again. Hard years. When we're thinking about listings and we know that they're gonna pick somebody that they feel like is a friend to them, then we have to think, okay, how do we create friends in the market? The gatekeeper of every transaction is a conversation. What's the first? Does anybody here get Zilla leads? You can tell me, it's okay. Okay. Does anybody get online leads at all? You guys are killing me, man. Y'all are all making calls, just cold calls, just grinding it out. If you got a Zilla lead, what's the first thing you gotta do? Right. If you get a Facebook lead, what do you gotta do? If you do an open house and you get a list of people, what are you gonna do? If your mom says, hey, Susie wants to buy a house and gives you her number, what are you gonna do? You gotta call Tyrone. Tell him, man. Simon liked me, but he said I wasn't quite ready. So at the end of the day, we gotta figure out how to mass produce, right? We gotta think quantity. If we want a lot of listings, if we want a really large business, at some point it has to be about volume because a lot of you are hiding behind giving great service to one or two clients, three clients, four clients. You're hiding behind that and justifying the fact that you're not building a volume of people who know who you are. And you're chalking it up to, well, I'm really giving these people great service. No, you gotta learn how to balance between giving people great service but still having time to build your business for your five-year-self. Because if you're just gonna be a reactionary agent and just do whatever is in front of you all day long, you're never gonna live that dream that you close your eyes and thought about. You're gonna be an average agent for the rest of your career. You're gonna make calls till three days before you die. I'm just kidding. But you might because you're not faking progressively. Be a progressive thinker who executes. Now, we gotta put that routine in place. So this comes, this is all full circle here. If we want to go out and grab five listings and then we're gonna get these in the next 30 days, we have to put a plan in place. And whenever we do our routine, we need to be thinking, okay, this is gonna get us where we wanna be in five years. But not only that, it's gonna help us crush it right now, today. See the way that I operate when I'm putting together my plan and what I go through on my daily basis. Everything I do helps me win right now and in five years. I'm not doing stuff that's just helping me win today and I'm not just doing stuff that's gonna help me win in five years. It's all, and it's all one activity. If you can find the activities that kill both birds with one stone, so going back, we know conversation is the gatekeeper between you and the transaction. No matter where you get your leads from, doesn't matter if you got it online or open houses or anywhere. That conversation has to be had before the next step in the process is made true or false. Now, now that we understand that and we think about all the lead generation activities we can do that's just gonna lead right back to this conversation, for me, and I'm only gonna tell you guys what I, how I, if I had it all do over again and what I teach and how I built my business. I can't tell you that you shouldn't go do social media because I want you to do social media. That's why we're all here right now. And obviously I've been really great at social media, but why don't I use it in my real estate business, right? Have you ever thought about that? And the answer is because I know that as I'm creating content for social media, the goal is to get on the phone or in person with somebody that sees the social media. And for me, I can just get their contact information for two cents a piece and just call them. I don't want a cold call. That's fine. Listen, go build your business on social media. I'm not telling you to go cold call people. What zero to diamond is this, it's a set of philosophies. It's not a cold calling program and it's not a make a million dollar a year program. It's a set of philosophies around knowing that transactions happen every day for the rest of your life, no matter what. Around knowing that because of that, business is unlimited for each and every one of you. And because of that, competition doesn't exist whatsoever. And then we need to understand how to communicate with people. When you see me making calls on YouTube and I'm coaching other agents making calls and stuff like that, if you hear the words that I'm saying and the advice that I'm giving them and how I'm talking to my clients, you'll have this feeling, I want you to understand that the feeling is not, I need to make calls. The feeling is I got to learn how to communicate with people so that I can articulate who I am to them the best way possible because when somebody answers the phone on a cold call that you called someone and you say, oh, well, they were mean. Well, here's the thing. They didn't answer the phone. I guarantee you thinking, I'm going to be mean to this person because they answered a phone number that they didn't know. So they gave you an opportunity right there to say, hey, I'm here to help you. I'm calling about this. Here's some information. Call to see if there's something I could do to help you type thing. They're hoping that you bring them value. They're not answering a phone in the middle of the day of a number they don't know, hoping that you're a scammer. They're not hoping to get mad at you. What's happening is they're answering the phone and just the fact that they answer the phone means that they want something positive there and then you're nervous on, you know, you're not confident self throws red flags at them. You got to hide behind your intentions that you're there to help them. When you call, when you do, wait, I have so many zero to diamond agents who crush it doing video. A lot of them, they don't do calls at all. They send me a message to say, man, I've sold this many properties this year, 30, 40, 50, 60 because of you. I'm like, oh, man, how many calls are you making, bro? And they're like, none. I'm like, what are you doing? How is this because of me? They're like, dude, I took everything that you say in zero to diamond and I applied it to what I'm doing. It's the philosophies behind it is what takes you to another level. You got to understand this is a communication platform where we're learning how to communicate how we are better. Instead of what you've been being taught before I came along, you don't want to say, well, what if I could do this? Would you sell then? Handling objections, trying to turn the situation into a deal today. That works great for on a car lot, not for a real estate agent. We got to build relationships, lifelong relationships, and I don't care if a prospect wants to buy or sell today or not. I just want to get to know you and I want you to know who I am. Let's hear everybody laugh really loud. Now, my process is this. I'm trying to talk to 10 people a day. If I'm a broker owner, trying to expand my brokerage, I want to talk to 10 agents a day. How do I get into luxury? Talk to 10 luxury owners a day. How do I do commercial? Go talk to 10 commercial owners a day. How do I get to my first deal? Go talk to 10 residential owners every day. That's it. It's really that simple. Create your processes. Now, for me, I made 100,000 calls over a 15-year period hand-diling and looking up the numbers one at a time on Bigfoot.com, white pages and Spokio. You remember Spokio? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had to put the address in there and then if that didn't work, I had to add the zip code. If that didn't work, I put their first name. If that didn't work, I put their last name. I had to do like different combinations for each one hoping I'd hit. Sometimes I wouldn't even hit. Number not there. That's how I looked up phone numbers my entire career. Again, going back to being grateful, you guys have a platform with Redx where you can go click, click, click, boom and get thousands of property owners of any property you want. Any property you want. So here's what I would do. I would make calls all morning and I would thank volunteer worker, community outreach. I'm working for free today. I'm calling to spread the good word to see what I can do to help you. This is community outreach. It's what you guys are doing. Believe it or not, I got to get a deal right now. Okay, you better reach out to more people to let them know what's going on and what you can do to help. I would make calls all morning and then guess what? All afternoon, social media. I would crush social media even though I understand where you're going with this but the thing is, is when you combine the weekly email strategy with a little bit of social media and the phone calls, you're deadly. Why? Because you're taking old school and new school and combining them. The problem is the millennials, they want to do just social media and the old school guys just want to do phone calls. The reason why I've been one of the most dangerous agents out there is because I am good at technology and I'm good at the social media stuff but I also understand that I need to talk to people and I'm willing to put in the work to make the calls to talk to the people I need to talk to. Because instead of spending $100 for one Zillow lead or one Boomtown lead or one lead from any of these lead generation sources, I can spend that and get 7,500 property owners of my choice and have out of this. Here's the numbers. Two cents, a contact. 10% pickup rate. You're at 20 cents. One out of two is a great conversation. You're at 40 cents per great conversation, not a lead that might not call you back. The conversation, 40 cents with the exact person you want to do business with. Last year, they sold you 200... I know nobody here bought Zillow leads or does any of that stuff but they sold you 200 million leads last year and there were like 6 million transactions. 200 million leads were sold and 6 million transactions occurred. Right? Yeah, it's a great business. Let's get in the lead generation business. Not 6 million transactions against 200 million leads that were sold. They're selling you random people in your market's contact information. It's a warm lead, Ricky. You call them, they either don't answer. Sometimes they buy stuff. Some don't answer. Some say I'm not ready for six to eight months. Right? Now, let's hear some numbers. How many property owners, what percent of property owners do you guys think have been on Zillow or some other syndication platform just looking at real estate in the last six to eight months? 100? 100? 70? A lot, right? Right? Now, let's just say it's 70, 80, 90, whatever it is. Couldn't you go out there and just get every property owner's information and call them up and say, hey, it's Ricky. I'm a local real estate agent here in San Antonio. How are you doing today? Cool, me too. I'm enjoying the days in the gorgeous look. I don't want to take it too much of your time today, but I saw you looking online at some properties here recently and I was just calling to follow up with that to see if there's anything in the world I could do for you and help you with that situation. Isn't there about a 70%, 100% chance that they're going to say, yeah, I was looking at this 123 Main Street and I was thinking to my man, you're really on top of your game, bro. Right? They're selling you random people in your markets, contact information you can get for two cents and do the same script. I'm down for a second. Do you guys understand what I just said? Okay. When this is over and we're all going to stand up and look back there and take a picture and I'm going to take some pictures over there. But you all are going to go back there in a single follow-up and get on that red X thing and he's going to give 50% off and you're going to try it my way for once. And you're going to get on that triple dialer and you're going to call people and you're going to say, hey, here I am. This is who I am, right? And this is what I do and I'm here to help. Love on people. Your job is to love on people and build that database, remarket to them so they never forget how much you love them. Everybody texts me at this number. I've got, there's a red X. Let me tell you everything I'm doing for you guys right now, for nothing. I'm going through the 60-day challenge. I'm doing a once-a-week Zoom call with everyone. It's open to the public. We're on week three, Monday at noon. Every Monday at noon through the 60 days. This Monday is week three. Text me at the number, send you the link. If you're already on my text thing, you'll get it. I'm also doing it next Wednesday and Thursday a two-day red X boot camp free where it's, we're going to do tutorial for an hour. I'm going to make live calls for an hour, screen share on my computer, triple dialing. You hear me laugh. You hear me cry, all that stuff. And then Q&A and role-playing for two days, next Wednesday and Thursday. It's free. You'll get that text to you. Let's see what else do I got. Nothing. Just text me here, right there. All right. Okay, so listen, I want to take a couple questions. But before I do, I just wanted to finish up with the fact that I really hope you got a lot out of this. And the biggest punchline for me is to think progressively and to line up that daily and weekly routine with where you want to be in five years. And really have that lined up. And I'll help you do it. Reach out to me. I will help you. I'll help you put that together. Oh, also, we have the coaches. You know, I've got about 20 zero to diamond certified coaches. Text me this number, there's an application you can apply for one-on-one coaching. That's there as well. No, no, I just want to say, I hope you guys got a lot out of this. Think progressively, right. Stay very, very focused on what you're trying to accomplish. When you hit those downs, think about what you have to be grateful for. Because guys, I'm telling you right now, we're living an amazing, I don't know each of your situations, but we're living an amazing life that we all have a lot to be grateful for. All right. I love you guys. Get loud one more time. Two questions. Yeah, I'll take two questions. If anybody has one, otherwise we'll take some pictures. Yeah, Mike. My name is Ricky Ray. Nice to meet you. Ricky Kruth. Love your name. Technical question with regards to the utilization of constant contacts. Yeah. I'm curious your thoughts on what KVCore with EXP offers with the campaigns comparison. I just spoke with constant contacts. And I'm like blown away with this. I don't really want to say either way, honestly. It's really kind of dealer's choice. There's pros and cons to both. You know what I mean? So I think maybe you can try both and see what you think. You know what I mean? And whatever works best for you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But I mean, dude, listen, with your name though, you're not going to have to worry about much, man. Again, Ricky, thank you for coming. San Antonio, appreciate you. Thank you. One more. Anybody else? You want to get a question? Wait, wait, get the mic. Coming with the mic. Oh, but everyone really wants to hear one sec. Oh, well, still I want... No, no, no. They want to hear it in the live stream though. The live stream wants to hear you. Harry Martinez. I'm from San Antonio. And I think we just need a let's go because I've heard that all day yet. A what? A let's go. Oh, let's go. Come on, Ricky. You could do it better than that. Let's go, guys. Hey, all right, if there's no other questions, let's stand up and look back there towards the balcony. And all the speakers come on stage. Let's take a quick pick. And then after this, I'm going to go over here where you guys know the banner is and take pictures. I think we all should look at the camera and say, let's go. Oh. Where's the photographer at? All right. Oh, he's up there. Where is he? I see him coming. Oh. Hey, we got one back there. Everybody look up. Everybody squeeze in a little bit. Squeeze in. Get close to the stage. So you can see the camera, guys. We don't mind up here. All right, we're going to do some pictures. Then we're going to do a video. This is like a wedding where you shuffle left. Shuffle left. Go back. Squeeze in. If you're behind the wall looking at the timer. One more time. One more time. Hold on. Stay where you are. Stay where you are. Stay where you are. I'm going to do one with my phone too as soon as he gets done. Like a video. Don't worry. I'm going to get your good side. Hold on, guys. Here. Hold on to that. All right. When I turn the camera to you all are going to go crazy. So, guys, I'm here with a couple of friends in San Antonio. We'll see you guys soon. Thank you, everyone, for coming. See you at the Yard House.