 You could put out a new email every hour. Newly is equal more money every year, and referrals equal the same money every year. Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for Ricky! Garoo! 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, strategies, he was sharing everything. You've got to focus on what's working and really go all in. The whole purpose is to collect your data. All you need is a small percentage. Normally, the equation is 1% of your database will close a deal every year. Learning how to expand our capacity. That's what's building your brand. It's an extension of who you are. No distractions, 100% permitted. It's all about building that email database because that is your platform. You own the data. It's literally your Facebook because when you send the email at 8 o'clock, you know it hit their inbox at 8 o'clock. Ricky, what's going on, my man? Hey, what's up, guys? Can you hear me good? Good, good. Can you hear me? Yeah. Alright, team. So, first off, I know Ricky's been doing this for a very long time. I believe you started in when you were 20 in, what, 2002? Ricky, if that's correct? Yeah. 20 years old. I have some young guys in the room and young gals in the room. So, I think your story is going to marinate with them extremely well. 2017, you started your coaching program, right? That's right. I've given it out for free, basically. I don't think anybody gives you, gives out more free content in the real estate than you. Right, Ricky? You've claimed that now, right? Yeah, for a while. For a while, yeah. This guy crushes it, man. So, hey, I appreciate you coming on, Ricky. The floor is yours. And if we have questions, we'll mute and do all that so we can ask questions to you as well. All right. Cool, cool. Are you, how many of you guys are already following me to some extent? I'll imagine more than half the room and all of them should be following them soon enough. Oh, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, no, I honestly, I didn't, you know, I don't know exactly how I can bring you guys the most value. I would imagine it would probably come from, you know, a little Q and A, understanding a little bit about your business and kind of what struggles you may be running into. Whether that be, you know, marketing admin, conversion, you know, lead gen, whatever the case may be. I'm happy to help there. So, be thinking about what problems you're having in your business because that's, I feel like I have a gift of being able to, in a very short period of time, show an agent how they can double, triple their business. I've helped thousands of agents double and triple their business. And it really kind of comes from the fact that I'm not, I don't have too many squirrels, if you know what I mean. I don't really jump from thing to thing. And that's one of the biggest problems, I think, with agents is they jump from thing to thing. You know, I built my entire business, circle prospecting, which everybody hates, sending postcards and doing a weekly email. And I just focused on that. When social media came out, because when social media started, I was already in the business for a good five, 10 years. There was no social media when I got started. There was no Zillow. There wasn't, you know, any of these platforms. And when it came out, I pretty much ignored it because I was focused on what I was doing. And plus I actually was one of the first people in my space. And as it kind of went away really fast, I thought, okay, social medias are like this fad that aren't going to really, you know, everyone, you know, I kind of thought, well, they're all going to crash and burn like it did. Well, I was wrong about that, but that's okay because I focused on what was working. And that's one thing I really want you guys to get out of this today is that you've got to focus on what's working and really go all in and just eliminate everything else. The problem is we're worried about the business when we might lose if we don't do everything. You know, like let's just say, for example, like for me, for example, like I didn't use social media at all in my real estate business, but I knew I was losing business there. Okay, I knew I was losing business by not using it to build my real estate business or not using it to try to, you know, advertise my business or get leads. I knew I was losing business there, but I was okay sacrificing that business I was losing because I was all in here and you can only do as much as you can do. We all have to figure out how much we can handle and stay at that capacity. You know, like some people have two pending deals and four active listings and their week is shot and I don't know what they do for 40 hours a week on two pending deals, but somehow they manage to waste their entire week on it. Whereas I would have 10 to 20 pending deals and 20 to 30 active listings at all times and literally I was walking around like I had nothing to do. It's about understanding how much you can handle and finding out what that sweet spot is behind the flow of the frequency of closings you want and then learning how to maintain that level of momentum. You can only do so much. That's why the business is unlimited. You know, always say closings happen every day, business is unlimited, competition doesn't exist. It's because we can only handle so much. So like fill up your cup, you know, have as much going on as you can handle and then stay there. And that's the name of the game. And so I was doing that without doing social media. Like I was keeping my cup full and keeping 10 to 20 pending deals and 20 to 30 active listings without social. So I'm like, why am I going to add this extra thing in here that's going to take time away from this thing that I'm doing that's crushing? But most agents have so many squirrels, they're just jumping all over the place when they're not focusing on the two or three things that actually work. Everything works. You got to pick your poison, what you, you know, what you want to go all in on. So that's super important. But I don't know. I could jabber all day long. I'd really love to kind of get into your, your businesses a little bit and see what you guys are having trouble with. I've done it everything. Let's just say, okay, I've had my own brokerage. I tried to build a team twice. I was the number one agent in my market for eight years in a row, number one for Remax. I did 100 deals a year for eight years in a row. I wrote books. I have one of the most, probably the one of the largest social media followings of agents in the world. So I've crushed social. I've built businesses on social. I travel and speak every week. I've probably done everything that any, you know, I'm a digital marketer. I was a cold caller. Like you name it, I've done it. I've lost everything. I slept in my car. I, you know, I was salesy. I was low. I've done everything. So there's nothing you can throw at me that I more than likely won't be able to shed some insight to help you become more efficient and double triple your business. So if you want to, I'd love to hear, you know, if anybody has questions or what problems are having in their business or, you know, what exactly I can help you with. A hundred percent Ricky, let me give you kind of a little bit of the room and the backstory of the room a little bit for you. So we've been a business as a brokerage for about five years right now. We're about 48 agents, about 200 transactions. We have team leaders in the room. We have brand new agents in the room and we have team leaders that are growing their teams as well. So there's a lot going on in the room. So I think there's a lot of different topics you're going to touch on the day. We have podcasts and media. They have VA support, helping them out with email marketing and social media and everything else. So agents, you guys have one of the best guide coaches in the whole entire industry. This is not the time to be quiet. It's time to ask your questions. There's no dumb questions in the room. Give them one. I'll get rid of them. Hit lead off. Nick's going to hit lead off. Hey Ricky. Quick question for our new agent center or the new agent center coming in. You're big. I've been calling you a long time. Way back since you had one office and the assistant used to sit behind you on the video. That's why it's cold cold. So my question for you is your weekly email is one of your centerpieces that you stick to. Yeah. For newer agents in the industry, can you touch a little bit on content for that because you feel like sometimes the wheels start to spin. You run out of things to present in that email. How do you keep that thing fresh? Well, I mean, do you think that, I mean, I'll just ask you a question for the people that kind of have trouble with this. What do you think the most interesting data point is in the market, in the local real estate market for consumers? Home values. Home values? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And what do you think is a driver of home values? Inventory and probably interest rates. Yeah. Inventory, right? And so what I'm saying is is every single hour, every single minute, just about, I don't know how big your market is, right? But every hour for sure, there's a few new listings, right? You could put out a new email every hour, which is, here's the new listings in the last hour. Your open rate would be crazy and that's putting out an email every hour. Think about it. There's new listings every hour. There's new closings every hour. There's new pending deals. Do you think that your clients would just love to know what the new listings are the moment they come on the market and endings and closings? There's like a constant flow of fresh data that your clients are very interested in every single hour. So all I'm saying is, is do one a week. You could do one every day for sure and it would be interesting once a week. If you're having trouble with this, you could literally be the new listing agent. Every week, it's just like Ricky's new listings. What market are you guys in? Ricky, hold on a minute. Where is it? On the Bay Area in California. The East Coast. Okay. It could be like new listings in Bay Area and the date every week. And they click. It's like, hey, hope you're having a great week. Here are the new listings. I especially like the one on Rosemary Street. Check them out right here. Let me know if you see something you like. That could literally be your weekly email every week and people would open it. And that whole thing about the one on Rosemary Street is I really like this one. Adding things in there out of your mind that adds the personableness, your personality into the email because most everybody is doing these cold emails. They're doing drips. So you get the criteria, you put an MLS or whatever and it just spits out listings that goes to the client. It's just completely cold. The client knows it's a robot. They know it's a robot. They know you didn't spend a second on that. And if you do one of those customized notes, it's the same note every time. So they eventually, even if they think the first one was really you, they know by the second or third when it wasn't. And they're getting that from three or four other agents. And so this is the trap we run into. We think that drips work and we think that hiring a company to do the emails with generic information that sucks, works and we're really just completely demolishing our brand. Drips are great. If you've got the weekly email going out say every Wednesday and it's giving people your opinions on stuff and then you've got drips going out as listings hit the market on top of that, awesome. That's great. But if you're just doing the drips and you're giving them none of you, see they want you. They get a million options of agents in the market. So now how are you going to stand out and how are you going to be the one out of the millions of agents? How are you going to be the one that they're like, I want them? This is what you've got to think about. Is it going to be one of the 20 who does the same drip to them? Or is it going to be the one that they know actually sits down and then comes up with great content for them that they're interested in? It's going to be the one that comes out with great content every week that's different from all the other agents because it came out of their brain. It's consistently on the same day every week and they're like, wow, this person is dependable, consistent, hardworking. This is the agent I want. But back to your question, like, bro, like if you run out of content for an email, like what? There's so much content like Google Bay Area. Are you kidding me? There's so much like Google Bay Area real estate and it cooked a news tab and just like, it was like 15 articles that were written in the last day about real estate in the Bay Area. Like it's crazy, right? But every single email that I do has new listing links at the top, right? Where it's like the last week or two of new listings. They get that every week. It's a fresh picture at the top where they feel this freshness, high resolution, new picture of the area, a landmark of some sort where they look at the picture and they say, oh, that's the bridge. That's the beach right there. This is that house or this is, they recognize it and they're like, oh, Bay Area, new listings and then like the body, which could be like restaurant of the month, deal of the month, news of the month, stats of the month. There's so much stuff. It's so easy and you can scale it, right? So like if you think about database, okay, the size of your database dictates the size of your income. The reason why most of you make 300,000 a year forever and can't ever scale up, it's because you're living off past kinds of referrals and you think any day your business is going to blow up when it's never going to. It's a mirage because you're doing deals but you think, oh, I've got to hit 400 one day. No, you're not. Not until you add more people into your sphere where you have more referrals coming in. But anyway, any referral you get, you need to be think, awesome, I'm still making the same amount of money this year. Any new leads you get, you're like, awesome, I'm going to make more money this year. That's what it is. New leads equal more money every year and referrals equal the same money every year. And so the size of your database dictates how much money you make. If your database is this size and it doesn't grow anymore and you get referrals out of this size database, that's going to be the same amount of money every year. You'll make more and more money every year. And then eventually when you're making the amount of money you want to make, you can stop growing it and you just keep making that amount of money. Like, you know, grow up to 800,000 a year. You grow it that much, which will take 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 years. And when you get there, then you don't have to grow it anymore. You can literally quit prospecting, lead gening, all that stuff and just keep making 800 a year off the repeats and referrals if you're doing a weekly email the whole time and continue to build the brand with these people where they never forget who you are. If you're doing that, then the people you met 6 years ago, you hear what I'm saying? It takes 6, 7 years to get to like 500 to a million most of the time. Like, I can tell you for a fact that you're going to get there if you do what I'm saying. And so, if it takes 5, 6, 7 years to get there, then what about the people you met? It only gets there if the people that you met 5, 6, 7 years ago when you started remember who you are. People you met year 2 remember who you are. Remember you met year 3 remember who you are. If nothing's in place and these people are slowly forgetting who you are because your method is to call them, you can't scale that. You can't scale calling. You can't scale social media. Oh, yeah. You can't put your database into Facebook and make sure every single one of them see your content. You're at the mercy of Facebook which only shows it to like 5% of your followers. And so, social media is a whole people crush it on social. And what they do is, they put out a lot of content, they get into a lot of DM conversations and that's kind of their database is the DMs. And they flip through their DMs and they DM people back and forth and they cultivate leads that way. That's a great way to do it. It's awesome. Everybody has to, again, everything works. You got to find out what works for you and go for it. But for me, I would be using social media for exactly what I use it for now. You guys see me posting stuff. The whole purpose is to collect your data. So, like, if you start following me, you know, you'll, Instagram will show you my content for a couple weeks, if that. And then if you don't start engaging with my content, guess what Instagram is going to do? It's going to quit showing you my content. You're still going to be following me, but you're not going to see my content ever. Why? Because the feed is this big and you can only see so many pieces of content. And if they know that you're not engaging with my content, they're going to stop making my content be one of the ten pieces of content you see every time you start scrolling, right? You guys see people that you're following that you don't see their content anymore and then you see their content like Instagram will just randomly show you something that they, you know, the content they did, you know, in six months and you're like, oh, I forgot about that guy. I wonder what he's been up to, whatever, right? Same thing's happening to you. And so, what you have is this cycle of people that come into your social media ecosystem and it's like a, you know, whatever, a couple weeks cycle where you may be getting the same amount of views all the time, but it's a different group of people every couple weeks. And the people that started following you that saw your content for a couple weeks, so what you got to do is you got to get their data while they're hot. As soon as they start following you, you need to reach out to them, look at their profile, see that they work at this restaurant and DM them and say, hey, I see, thanks for following me. I see you work at wherever. Nice to meet you. I'm in real estate. You know, how you doing today and see if you can get into it back and forth and eventually get to a place where you're looking to buy or sell a home. No, cool. I'd love to work with you later. Is it okay now? Bam. But you got to get them while they're kind of in that cycle where they followed and they're kind of looking at your stuff because after a couple weeks, they're not going to see your stuff anymore. Back to what I was saying, that's not a good place to like make sure people never forget who you are because all of you know people you're following that you don't see their content. So calling is not scalable. Social media is great for like Legion, but in my opinion, not great for long term like relationship building necessarily. So you like have to understand all these different platforms and what they're good for and then kind of get them all working together. You know, for the greater good. When you have the email and cell phone, that's your data. That's your database. That's your social media platform. That's yours. Now you can use that to make sure that they see you every week. You're not at the mercy of an algorithm. And now we scale that to 20,000, 10,000, 8,000. Right. Now we have a business and that's how you get to you know, 4, 5, 6, 700, 800, a million, 2 million a year in commissions is by building your own platform. And every time I take a sip of fresco, every time I take a sip of this, I get a new listing. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Thank you for that. And they have access to email marketing too, which is nice. They also I didn't mention they have a full video studio to shoot video content as well. There's lots of options there too. Any other questions you guys have? What should I Ricky, my name is Brandon. I'm actually a guest here. You know, I just want to spotlight I followed you and you reached out to me with personal message saying hey, how you're doing. I thought that was pretty impressive. Most internet personalities don't do that. So the fact that you had a bandwidth to do that was impressive to me. Two part question, your email obviously you have a template, right? You're you're sounds like you're plugging these fresh, you know, images and stuff into a template. And if you do, is it like a contact type of template? Or do you try and make it to where it doesn't look like computers, you know? What do you get out there? Yeah, I mean, you never want you always wanted to have a feel that see people know it's a bulk message, right? They know you send it to everybody. But when they read it, they almost kind of like, but did he send this to me directly? Because it sounds so authentic, right? And it's got so much personality behind it like he like people can tell that there was time spent. Let me go I'll show you guys this. You guys can actually go here and see every email I did for the last year. So I've been doing this email since 2007. Think about that. 20,000 people get it about 7,500 open it every single week. Think about that. But anyway, there's this link here. And you guys can see this? Yeah. So there's training here where I screen share and actually build an email for you and talk about it. But down here is every email I did for the last year. This was deal of the month. Let's see what pictures not popping up on that one. Let's see. Oh, there we go. See different high resolution picture, new listings. I wrote all this. I wrote all this. All this is always the same every week. Let's go to a more recent one. This is one where I gave away $100 gift card to a restaurant. High resolution picture, new condo listings and stuff. I wrote all this. So this is basically what it looks like. I have a four week template system right here with constant contacts where you just plug and play, deal of the month, restaurant of the month, stats of the month, news of the month. It makes it really simple for you. But you guys can go to zero to diamond.com and you can join this for free. And right here at zero to diamond.com you create an account. I've got all my scripts and email templates right here. So this is all my scripts right here. My unique scripts that I came up with after making 100,000 calls and then all those emails are right here. You can go right here. It's just scripts and email templates at zero to diamond.com You can go there and get all that stuff for free and get the four week template system right here and see all the emails right there. Just go there and watch this training and just this needs to be the literal like foundation of your business. If you don't have anything like I would ask you, like what are you doing to stay in touch with your database? Like most of you aren't doing much or you're just calling or texting, right? But if you would actually have a system put in place where everyone you talk to, you know is never going to forget who you are. Now it's just gangbusters. You just talk to as many people as you can to get them in there, make great first impressions and then like all you need is a small percentage. Normally the equation is 1% of your database will close a deal every year. It's like if you have 10,000 in there, you're going to do 100 deals a year with no cold calling, no Legion, no Zillow, no social media, no nothing, just the weekly email and the referrals and past clients and referrals and referrals come in close 100 deals a year. I know people with 5,000 people they close 50 deals a year. It's a 1% role when it comes to this. You just build this up to the level you want, how many deals you want and then you're done. You don't have to prospect anymore. Your whole career is stages. You're in the building stage. You're in the servicing stage. Now you're to push it to exactly where you want income level stage. Then you're at the no prospecting stage where you're still closing the same amount of deals. Then you're like how do I pivot? Where do I go? Because this is a rat race. This is wild. I've been showing property for 12 years now. This is getting nuts. You start to find your way out of this. That's the path. For people, listen, I watched guys that were 80 years old die making cold calls. They didn't have social media. There's so many opportunities now that you can pivot. I think, wow, there wasn't social media when I started and I just remember those days. Now it seems so long ago and I'm just like, man, I can't imagine my life without having the opportunity to build the businesses that I have after real estate. I can't even put it into words how big it is, how incredible it is. Anyway, go to www.diamond.com and pull up those emails and just copy what I'm doing. R&D, my friend. Ricky, you always talked about how you did not have a team for the longest time and you were out there just one man and an assistant. Can you speak to showing multiple buyers properties while handling pending listings? I do much to handle listings. Other people are showing them for you and selling them. Multiple buyers. Yeah, just set it up and show them what I guess I'm looking for the problem. Yeah, I guess I guess it would be scaling. I think every a lot of agents, most agents, 80% of agents struggle with working on their business instead of their business, right? That's always the big pitfall. So continuing to curate leads while showing property while putting out fires on those listings it would be perfect if they always just sold themselves and didn't need to be maintained but I don't think that's really true. I'm checking in with those clients. Maybe that's not how you operate. I absolutely operate that way. I would call my clients every week and I would do a weekly check-in I would set aside a day normally an hour or two a day, I would time block that from the beginning of the week to sit down and call everybody I had a property listed with. Normally I had 20 to 30 and most of those I'm already in contact with a lot anyway so I don't have to call every single one of them because I'm already talking to them on a daily basis for whatever reason showings or we have it the thing about it is is it comes back to what I was originally talking about with squirrels and capacity. Like I said, some agents have two pending deals and four active listings and their week is shot. You guys know who I'm talking about right? You may be looking around thinking about people in the room right now. What I'm saying is that I could handle a lot and the way that I handle a lot is I basically ignore a lot and I know I realized how when to be worried about something and when to realize that something that a lot of people worry about isn't worth worrying about because it takes up capacity. So what happens is the people that they take two pending deals and four active listings and their week is shot is because the reason that's their capacity is because they're filling up their capacity with worry and I felt my capacity up with where's my next fucking deal coming from? That's all I was worried about and so when I list a property I do forget about it. I did my job. I got it on the market. I call the seller once a week. My assistant gets the agents in to show I don't have to worry about that part of it. What fire could pop up on a listing? I could pop up. Are you asking me what fire could pop up? Yeah, what fire could pop up? I don't know. Buyers here freaking let the cats out and you know left our heat on water. I mean I literally had to inspect them. Christy, Christy, go over there right now lock the door. What's another fire? Who's Christy? I don't have a Christy. My assistant. Okay, yeah, so give me one of those. Yeah, exactly. So that's step one. You have to do 100 deals a year. You have to have an assistant that handles everything on the back end. You have to. You can't do 100 deals a year doing the admin and going to lock in the doors because buyers let it cat out and doing all that stuff. You can't. It's not going to happen. That may be what the problem is right there. Anybody else? No, I'd like to stay here for a second. I want to hear more. I want to make sure that we're good. I can't see you. But I want to. I'll be too close. I'll tag. We want to get more questions here tonight. Yeah, I don't want to take up too much time. Do you want to finish up? No, I mean, I think, yeah, I think that like so I'm like around 30 deals a year, right? So I'm not really justifying on my average price point and assistant. And I think that hasn't had to take the lead to hire that person a great assistant doubles your business overnight. So you go from 30 to 60 day one. Why? Because you spend half your time right now let's say 50% dealing with the stuff that your assistant's going to take over. So 50%, right? The other 50% is spent actually making money in front of clients, showings, listings, phone calls, following up doing the things that actually make money. So just think if you doubled because if you're doing it 50 now, let's say 100% moneymaking activities just doubled your moneymaking activity time. So what does that do? It doubles your income. You literally go from 30 to 60 day one. Now will it take you 30 days to train her and make sure you're on the same page and get into the flow? Yeah. Yeah, it will. But, but dude like literally I would get a call from a client. We work a deal out on the phone, we're going to list the property. I literally text my assistant. The property, the seller's name, the email, the phone number, the price, the commission. And I just say new listing. What does she do? She takes it. She docusigns it. It comes back. She orders pictures. It comes back. She puts it on MLS. It comes back. She sets up showings with agents. I text her one quick little text and I never hear another peep out of it until the offer is made. What does that allow me to do? Go get more listings. And I'm just stacking while she's closing. She's servicing. She's getting the signatures. She's ordering pictures. Put it on MLS. Setting up all the showings. I don't hear a word about it. Not a peep until an offer is made. Every week I'll call the seller and say, hey, because the feedback will be right there. I'll pull up the showing time and I'll see all the feedback. How many times has it been shown? I'll call the seller and say, hey, we've shown it. I'll look and see if anything's changed in the market in the subdivision. If anything new went on the market, if something went under contract, if something's closed, I'll make sure I'm good there. I'll call the seller and say, hey, a listing popped up and went under contract in a day. It's priced 10,000 below yours. We've been shown six times and, you know, two of them said it was overpriced, blah, blah, blah. Right? So I'll take a couple hours a week and call the sellers and give them an update. Outside of that, I don't hear anything until offer is made. Literally just attacks and then I don't hear nothing for a couple weeks until offer is made. Then I step back in and negotiate the deal. Give it back to her. Now, you see how I can do 100 deals now? Sleeping all day? I was literally working like 20 hours a week, bro. Right? 100 deals a year is two deals a week. Do you feel like you have the capacity to close two deals a week? Yeah. Absolutely. Obviously, she was licensed, right? She's licensed. Yeah. Yeah, she's licensed. All day. I don't know if it's different. She has to be licensed to write contracts and stuff. Same thing with purchasers. You want to make an offer? Cool. Text her the buyer's name. If they want an inspection, a financing, closing date, boom. Done. Submit to the... I don't hear anything until we get a counter offer. It's efficiency, right? And then learning how to expand our capacity. Yeah. I guess we worry that you lose the personal touch, right? Where? Where? When I lose the personal touch? No, I'm speaking excuses out. I know, but I'm talking it through with you and I'm just wondering where in that process did I lose the personal touch? My assistant never contacted the client at all. She never talked to him. Got it. I guess that's the question. A lot of people have their assistant She doesn't text anybody. She doesn't text anybody. She sent the docuSign from my account to them to sign the listing. That's all she did as far as the client's concern. Yeah. Any communication to the client is me. She doesn't call, text, nothing. It's all me. I call and give them the update on the market. If there's a problem, I'm the one calling and texting them. Not her. If she sees a problem, she calls me and says, hey, this is happening on this deal. I'm like, okay, cool, got it. I'll call the seller and put the fire out. There's no personal touch loss. See, you got it. It's kind of like the weekly email, right? A lot of people are like, why don't you have somebody write that for you? And I'm like, that's the thing you can't let anyone else write because that is your entire that's what's building your brand. It's an extension of who you are. It's the impression that your clients have of you and how you're going to operate and how you're going to work and get to know you more through that because you can't call them every week, right? This is the only way you can do this at scale. Even though I'm out of production for two years, my dad handles all the listings and sales, I still write the email myself. That's the one thing that I still do in our real estate business. I'm not going to let that go. You got to know as you continue to grow, bro, you're going to realize the things that you can delegate that doesn't water down the personal touch. I'm never going to let a VA or TC call my client. Hell no. That's my client and I'm going to deal with it. That's what they hired me for. It's for me to be their agent, not my assistant to be their agent. Those are the little things like staying in front of people is where you make your money. Thank you. Thank you, Ricky. I have a question for Ricky. Experience or agents, new agents? Anybody? Yes, I will. Hi, Ricky. Tracy and Elton. I just wanted to touch on that. When in your business, because I'm the person that you're talking about that has a few pending and then a couple of active listings. That's the only look on your face. Oh, shit. And then I just sleep, you know. So basically, I, yeah, squirrel brain. I basically am trying to build my team. Once again, I switched brokerages over here. That's a big jump, right? Like worried about two pinnings and like four listings, but you're building a team like. I know it's a lot. So I came over to E3 about six months ago. I was with Keller Williams for 10 years. So I'm, you know, some of it's new to me here and just wanting to build a team. I have a different mindset now as far as that goes. How did you know when finding your assistant, your license assistant, the first step when that was necessary and how did you kind of, I guess the right steps in finding that right person. Because I have had one in the past. Didn't really work out. She ended up just being a retired agent for a while. But anyhow, I'm just trying to figure out those first steps to really finding the right person. Yeah, it's a great question. So what happens is as a single agent is was running to this bottleneck in our business. Okay. And then the pressure starts building up and we know that whatever is bottlenecking our business is preventing us from growing anymore. And so that's the very first thing that we bring an assistant on is to take care of that bottleneck for me personally. It was when I had 30 active listings. So when I had 30 active listings, I was spending literally full time setting up showings for agents that wanted to show my listings. And I couldn't prospect anymore to continue to build my business. Literally eight hours a day. It was just like one after another. People wanting to show my listings. And so for me, it's kind of a process because I'm in a vacation area. Call the rental company. They call the renters. They ask if it's okay. They call the back. They call me. There was this whole long process which is still kind of that way even though we have showing time now. It's still a little bit that way. The agent puts in a showing request. We still have to reach out to... Anyway, it was a process. More of a process then than it is now. And so that was the first thing. And I was like, ah! Okay. And I was like, ah! I was so persistent just to take that one task off of my shoulders to where I could continue to grow. Then once I got her in there and got her train on that one thing, then I added another thing. Right? Which was like... Let's see what was it. I think I was having her put things in MLS for me, listings in MLS. Then she started to learn transactions. Then I had her starting to do postcards and letters and then blah, blah, blah. I was just really holding everything back. Right? There. And then you kind of build from there. What the bottleneck is going to be for you? I don't know. What it's going to be for her, for him. I don't know. Everybody's business is different. But you'll run into this road block where this activity is just really taking up all your time and it's not helping you grow your business. And that's what you bring in. That's when you know, okay, I got to have that. And so I went through... I want to say I went through... I know for sure two. I want to say maybe three, but I think it was two and the third one was the winner. And so the first one was just like a friend from high school that it went pretty good for a while, but then it didn't go so great. The second one, which she was literally there a day, she was like, I can type 500 million words a minute. And then I was like, okay, you're fired. And then I landed the one I have, which she was an assistant for a local broker already. So she already had experience with MLS, with transactions, with real estate. She already knew all the local agents. So it was kind of like a real slam dunk. You may have to go through a couple. I'll tell you what one of my mentors was slow to hire quick to fire. So be slow with hiring. Make sure you're going through all the stuff and checking references and, you know, spending time with them and seeing if it's a good fit, talking about goals, setting expectations. But the moment you realize this isn't a good fit, fire them quickly so that you can move on to somebody else and you'll find a fit, you know, it's tough, but it's part of it. You have to have someone really good if you want to explode. Mind still with me. This will be the 10th year that she's been with me. She does Six Figure. So she has a really good spot because you know, what she does is really easy. When I was in production, we were doing 100 deals a year, literally standing on our head. Like it's two deals a week. I mean, it was just nothing for us. It was just like easy. Like we were never in a bind whatsoever. It was just very, very, very easy. And we were happy with that pace. It was just a good pace. We were making a lot of money and we were happy with where we were. We didn't really have an aspire to go to 120 or 150 or 200 deals a year because I could see what kind of strain that would really be. So I just kind of pivoted into digital marketing. But I just, I can't imagine being in the building stage of my business not even having an assistant and then even thinking that it's okay to start trying to build a team. I just, I can't even like fathom the thought process there at all. I mean, let me back up for a second because I figured I get a little different reaction. Why would you want to build a team right now? You've got a business to build. Why not build the business and then think about what you want to do? What's the goal with the team? Yeah, no, I think that you know, I do know the assistant is step one. I've done that before for sure. I know that's step one. I think big picture you know, I building team right. For me it was just hey buyers agent doing a lot of the tasks that you already mentioned your assistants doing. So I was thinking along the same lines as that. The tasks taking time away from me getting a business. I tried to build the team twice and what I realized is that agents, you know, it's kind of weird because when agents join a team, their goal is to learn what they can learn and then move on to do it on their own. That's their whole goal with joining a team. But the team leader's goal, the team's goal is to retain them forever. And so it's like it's very confusing situation because you know, the agent has a completely different goal than the actual team and most of them come and go really quickly. The future top producers and they you literally don't teach them anything because you're doing all the admin Legion and marketing for them. So now they become dependent on you. They're not learning the tools they need to to go be successful as a single agent because you're not trying to teach them anything because you want them to stay on the team forever and stay dependent on the stuff and make money for the team. And then when they do finally leave, they're basically starting over at square one because now they have to go learn Legion admin and marketing because the team a lot of money passively and off of other agents. So the growth mindedness was there but it comes back to hey, I'm a guy that was a single agent sold 100 properties a year. I'm really good at handling a lot and becoming as efficient as possible. So I just think a little differently in those terms. I guess I just have to go back to okay, what is the goal with the team long term? What am I trying to accomplish? If it's to build this massive team where it's like a company within a company where I can eventually find a replacement and step out and still make a million bucks a year sounds like a lot of work to me. I could do it a lot easier just making a million bucks a year and keeping all the money by a bunch of rental properties but I like to go to sleep at night without a worry in the world where nobody's dependent on me for nothing. That's why I don't have any employees. I have the one assistant but then I have a multitude of businesses. I don't have a single employee. I go to sleep at night like a baby because nobody's dependent on me for anything, right? And that's that I have to live with peace but I also want to make a million bucks a month so go figure. Thank you. I love it. Real quickly I know we only have a few more minutes left with you Ricky but I know we've talked a lot about more experience agents in the room. What would you recommend them doing every single day as a new rager right now hurling the market? It's a loaded question because it comes down to like are they part-time, full-time? Everybody's story is different for what they're good at and where they came from and what their background is. Are they young? Are they old? Do they have a past career? There are so many things. Are they part-time, full-time? So there's a lot to unpack there but number one especially for part-time agents if you're not working real estate full-time and if you are working full-time then how you paying your bills because it's a new agent you're not closing any deals, right? So there's another question but you've got to time most agents newer especially that aren't full-time they don't really like time block when they're going to dedicate 100% to real estate. So they're just doing whatever whenever and because they're not dedicating any time to it they don't really have a business they just don't they're just doing whatever, whatever. So you've got to sit down and say here are the hours on these days every week that I'm 100% focused on building my real estate business and I'm going to get it during those hours. No distractions, 100% committed. That's the first step and then you got to try to figure out what am I going to do during these hours down to okay, my brand new license because if so I've got a lot of post license classes and stuff I've got to do so you need to spend 50% of your time doing that stuff the other 50% needs to be on the phone. So I probably post once a day which literally takes a second there's two types of content there's the content that you think about you script out, you film you edit and it takes hours and hours to make one little piece of content then there's a piece of content where you literally just do something and post it literally 60 seconds in the beginning just do the 60 second content it's the content that you make that's really fast that doesn't take a bunch of time later on when you've got time and you've built your business and stuff and you want to do more elaborate and post production stuff awesome but I wouldn't like spend hours and hours trying to edit videos and stuff I would do the quick content just for time's sake just post stuff once a day would be great just to try to get some momentum going boom there's 60 seconds 60 seconds every day taken care of now what are we going to do we need to be talking to people start with your sphere call your sphere ask how they're doing tell me in real estate get their email that's where you're going to start your weekly emails get them to your database boom weekly email going you can get that train rolling and then I think I would move as a new agent I would move straight over to for sale by owners and set appointments up to go look at the houses right and talk to them how long are you going to try to sell this thing without an agent before you throw the towel in because 90% of them are going to list and they just want to see if they can do it on their own have a little time and see if it happens it happens great and so I'd follow those every week call them on Monday and say how was your weekend do you have any showings and like continue to build that relationship long term I hate for sale by owners honestly this is just new agent stuff but that's a good way to get some immediate quick experience talking to property owners that want to sell that don't have it I mean that's the quickest way you can get some real experience really fast and then I might move into expires think I would go that route get 10 years worth of expires and just call them all say hey I see you were trying to sell this house at one point whatever happened boom it's easy as pie sell so many properties and then you can get into more like like specific stuff like you've got a buyer for this neighborhood you call the subdivision right do a handwritten letter hit them on social call them hey I'm the guy that wrote you the handwritten letter are you interested in possibly selling to my buyer or whatever or finding properties that are really good deals rental properties maybe you have like a pocket listing or maybe see a good rental property calling other people that own that type of rental properties say hey I see you got this property would you want another one by chance I got this other one that's really similar to yours you know I didn't know if you might want another one and then you just get into this conversation maybe they want to sell that property it's all about just getting like finding excuses to talk to people and then building the relationship on the conversation in a direction of you may not want to do nothing now but I love to stay in touch with you is that okay because I love to work with you later is it okay if I stay in touch cool what's a good email it's all about building that email database because that is your platform you own the data it's literally your facebook what's the motion that people make when they go on social media the physical motion show me show me you pick up your phone everybody do this I picked up my phone I'm looking at I'm looking at social media what am I doing well okay cool cool let's look okay now we picked up our phone do it again we picked up our phone and now we're looking at our email what's the motion we're making reading is that the same motion or not it is so what do we have here we have our own social media platform where they're scrolling through the news feed aka their inbox looking for an interesting piece of content it's the same thing now go out there and create everybody's like I want to do social media I'm like great we'll get a bunch of emails no I want to do social media I'm like no email is social media it's the best social media why because when you send the email at 8 o'clock you know it hit their inbox at 8 o'clock when you post on Facebook you don't know if they saw that pep that piece of content only 5% of the people that are following you see that piece of content on average let's say 90% of the people in your database is gonna see that email in their inbox whether they click on it or not it's a different story but they're gonna see it it's an impression you know when you look at the insights on Instagram and it shows you impressions you know that number and that word impressions that means how many people saw it they might not have double clicked it and liked it but they saw it with their eyes that means something that means a lot like they may scroll through and see you're doing an open house they might not have liked it but they see you working it means something even just because they didn't like it doesn't mean it doesn't mean anything it means something how many pieces of content that you actually like that you see on social that you don't actually hit the like button right but you see it you saw it and you like you liked it in your mind like you watched it you know you enjoyed it but you didn't hit the like button it's the same thing but you gave them an impression so when people see it in the inbox of your every of their email they might not click it but the impression meant something because they what see you working they see you sending it every Wednesday and they're like damn they're dependable that I trust them if I can trust them to send me an email every week I can trust them to sell my house I'm not going to call Julie that sends it once a month fuck that she's lazy yeah yeah that's what once a month email tells your clients I'm lazy and when you do it where another company sending it for you sending generic content they'll open it a couple times and then they just they won't open it anymore right Ricky I want to respect your time Ricky okay one last question and Ricky that's okay yeah anybody else have one last question for Ricky on zoom when I ask a question alright this is no more questions today Ricky I I scared you guys enough today oh no I said it's all good but they follow you they kind of know how you are I would imagine so I kind of knew what we were getting ourselves into the truth my deep personality laid out there for everyone so hey I appreciate Ricky everything you're coming in talking to the group man we'll have to do it again soon alright okay guys I hope I helped you guys in some form or fashion thank you see ya