 In today's episode, I have another zoom call with an entire brokerage of agents. And I love doing these sessions. I actually do them for free. If you have a team or a brokerage or an office and you would love me to come in on a zoom call and do one of these calls for your group or your office, feel free to reach out to me. You can DM me on Instagram or just email me ricky underscore caruth at yahoo.com and I'll be more than happy to set that up. I love coming in and answering questions and figuring out, you know, where you guys are running into trouble in your business and just do an incredible training session for you and your office. So please reach out to me. I'm more than happy to do that. But in today's session, I dive into a little bit of the market, um, but also the realities of this business and literally how hard it is, but the, the, the real, the real talk of it is that anybody can do it. Okay. So although it is hard, the success is not reserved for the few anyone can succeed in this business. Now it is hard. And the reason why a few succeed is because only few don't give up, but it is available to every single person. I dive into all kinds of things in this one. So definitely, you know, buckle in, snuggle up, get comfy, listen to this at the gym on your commute to the office or wherever you listen to podcast and enjoy it. All right. Go ahead and smash the subscribe button, the like button, all that stuff. And please comment below when you hear something in the video that resonates with you and let's get it. You know, when we were shut down on our homes and couldn't go anywhere for that 45 day economic shutdown, I put it in the box and I put it down. I put a video out that said the market is going to surge harder than we've ever seen. And that's what happened. You know, that's a drop from 6 million in 2021, 5 million last year. And now 4.2 ish. That's a big like that. That's a crash. Okay. Like we're in a crash guys. Morgan's rates being high is building up so much demand right now. You know, leads me to believe that there's maybe a possibility we'll see rate cuts, but I don't want to speculate there. And it doesn't matter. That's the cool thing for us because why? Closings happen every day. No matter what and you're selling stuff and you're showing property every day and go to listing appointments and doing all that because of all the work you did prospecting for the last three months. When it was slow, you don't have time to make calls, which is fine. Could I be your agent? Right. Establish yourself as their agent. Do you have an agent? Do you not have an agent? I'd love to work with you. Let's work together. I'm an A-list. Okay. Yeah, we're working together. Establish yourself as the agent. All right. I just wanted to say thank you for joining us. And you know, shining some wisdom, we do have a couple of questions in regards to, you know, obviously real estate, what's what's happening on the buyer side and the listing side. And I guess if you can just, you know, start off, maybe what do you, what are you thinking about the entire environment and what is it changing to? Yeah. No, absolutely. Good morning, guys. Where are you guys located? New Jersey. Manalapuna, Jersey, Central Jersey. Oh, beautiful, beautiful. So yeah, you know, there's two camps out there, right? There's the, let's see, let me see if I can, let's not see if I can mute you guys while I was talking, but that's okay. There's two camps out there, right? There's the, it's going to crash. Prices are going to go down 20, 30, 40%. And there's the, everything's going to be okay camp where prices are going to be, you know, are going to be around that historical appreciation number of say four or 5% a year. So if you've been listening to, if these buyers out there, there's two camps of buyers as well. There's the buyers who are sitting on the sideline thinking they're listening to the guy saying it's going to crash, that prices are going to crash, and they've been waiting for like years, right? And we're up like 40, 50, 60% from pre-pandemic in terms of home prices. So, and those buyers just continue to wait. And in my opinion, they're going to continue to lose because prices are just going to continue to go up. If you listen to the guys who say it's going to crash, you'll never buy a house, okay? So since the pandemic started, I have predicted every step of the market, every step of the way, this stuff was so telegraphed, if you will. You know, when we were shut down on our homes and couldn't go anywhere for that 45 day economic shutdown, I put a video out that said the market's going to surge harder than we've ever seen. And that's what happened, you know, 2021 happened in December. I said, we're hitting the bottom for prices. Somewhere, we're bottoming out somewhere right here for home prices. Well, home prices sure enough bottomed out towards the end of January. In February and March, I said, we're going to go positive year over year home prices, which we eventually did, and we're up. And then I said, maybe, I don't know early May, that we were going to go not only positive year over year, but to all time new highs, which we did. And if you, like if you look at the track record of guys like myself who've been saying, we're good, you know, there's a supply and demand issue, you know, you made some pretty good decisions. If you listen to the guys that say it's going to crash and burn, will they say that every year, you'll never buy a house, okay? I would fear to say that we're in the darkest days of this recession in terms of the housing market right now. I think this fall and winter is going to be kind of the depths of it in terms of the number of transactions, okay? So, like, we're going to hit 4.2, 4.3 million sales this year in the country. That's 2008 numbers. We did 4.1 in 2008. You know, that's a drop from 6 million in 2021, 5 million last year and now 4.2-ish. That's a big, like that's a crash, okay? Like, we're in a crash, guys. So, for your individual businesses, I think the big punchline is is that if you're keeping your head above water right now, you are winning so big. Number one, number two, if you're taking advantage of this down moment and multiplying your database, like, if you're 2xing, 3xing your current database between now and say February, your business, you're going to make a million bucks in the next two years, okay? That's just the name of the game is how many people know who you are and then what your system's on the back end to stay in touch with everyone. That's really just the name of the game. How well are we communicating who we are that we're here to help? How well are we able to create that friendship, you know? Like, it comes down to like this. How good are we creating friends? Like, are we good at meeting people and just building friendships out of thin air? Because if you are, then you've got a shot. That's not the whole picture, but you've got a shot to really go big with this business. The back end is that once you create that relationship, you know, how do they never forget who you are, what your simple system's on the back end? But yeah, the current environment is this. Prices are near all-time highs. Inventory is still historically low and transactions are historically low. We're going into the fall, which always slows down. Every single year, even 2021, the year of the boom, okay? We had less transactions and prices went down. It went from like $344 to $338, right? A medium home price from like August to like November, whatever. You know, some people are like, oh, yeah, Ricky, like prices go down in the fall. You know, you're not talking about New York. You're not talking about South Florida. And I go right to the data of South Florida. You know, West Palm, Miami, Naples, wherever. And you look at the data, it went down in the fall of 2021. I go right back to those people, those keyboard warriors in the comments and say, what data are you looking at? Because it's right here. They went down even in 2021. This stuff is so cyclical, guys. If you look at the number of homes that sell in the country on a straight line, you know, that, you know, shows you how many on a graph. And you compare 21, 22, and 23. Like it's two, it's two different, you know, they're stacked under each other. But the ebbs and flows of, of when, you know, there's the, the peaks and valleys of those lines are identical. It's insane how cyclical the business really is. Not only throughout each year, which is crazy, but also throughout the decades. Like the last big one was around the 2008 situation. Now we have this situation. It's going to recover. We'll go 10 more years. There'll be like, it's, and then once you understand how to work two things, the yearly cycles and the 10 year cycles to your advantage in your business, then you're unstoppable because you realize closings happen every day. No matter what, like go back to 2008.com crash, 9 11 pandemic, whatever. And look in your MLS, your county records and look at how many closings are happening every single day. Go to the darkest, slowest day of the 2008 period or 9 11.com, whatever. Closings are happening every single day by the truck loads, more than you can ever handle. And so that's the current environment. This winter, if you're struggling now, you're really going to be sucking wind in the fall and winter because it's going to get worse. Okay, but then it's going to pick up. We're going to have a great year next year. Morgan Stanley thinks we're going to have prices are going to go down next year. I don't believe it. We'll see. It's going to have a lot to do with mortgage rates. Mortgage rates really control everything. Okay. And I'll say two things about mortgage rates. Number one, mortgage rates being high is building up so much demand right now. Okay. So much demand. Here's why. The sellers that are in their homes that won't sell because they're sitting on low mortgage rates, they, I mean, you guys can shake your head and agree or not to say no. But it's to my understanding with all the data that I read and all the people I talk to, that there's a massive amount of these people who feel locked in with the golden handcuffs that hate their home and every day hate it more and more and more. And they want to move. They want to upgrade. They want to do something different, but they can't. I mean, it just doesn't make financial sense if we're sitting on 3.8 percent mortgage rate to go buy a home at 7 percent or six and a half or even six or even five and a half. However, every day they want to more and more and more and more. And so that demand, as long as rates stay in this six to seven range, eight range, whatever, every day that that continues, that demand of those sellers who want to move is just brewing bigger and bigger and bigger. Okay. And when mortgage rates get down to a certain rate, it's just going to unleash the beast on two things. One, inventory and two, these people are going to be buyers as well. It's just going to be like this insane market. Okay. So you got that happening on the, on the other, the other part of mortgage rates are the amount of 33 year olds in the U S is more than we've seen in over in almost 20 years. Like we don't, we don't even understand the amount of pent up demand. It's historic when it comes to sellers who owners who want to upgrade and first time home buyers, people that are 33, 34, 35 birth rates in 1990 spiked like massively. If you look at a birth chart and you look at 1990 compared to the eighties and early in late seventies, it's crazy. Now it's nothing compared to the baby boomer generation, but it's, it's, it's like double what it has been for the last 15 years. So we have this record amount of 33 year olds who happen to be the beginning age of an average first time home buyer and 98% want to become a home owner. And we have record amounts of them sitting there, right next year, the 34 next year, the 35, another group of 33 year olds are coming in and this birth rate stays at this elevated rate for over 15 years. Like we have so many decades of demand, unlike we've seen in the last 15 years, like the last 15 years or whatever, the next 15 years are going to be insane. And we can't keep up with the amount of inventory we need for this. We haven't been able to keep up before. We're definitely not going to be able to keep up now. So we have just, we're in the middle of this perfect storm where the market's kind of resetting into this kind of state with these high rates that's building all this demand for us. And it's like a rubber band. The further we pull it back, the lot louder it's going to pop when we, when it finally hits. Like I think when rates get down into like the six and a half to like when it hits six, I think we're going to, it's going to be crazy, you know, with buyers. And I think inventory is going to get even worse. But then I think when it gets into the five and a half to five range, which could take years guys, it could take one year, two year, three year, I don't know how long it's going to take for this to like happen. But like you're in such a good position as a real estate agent. If you can just maintain, not lose your mind, not become impatient, stay the course, think five years out, build that database. And we're entering into an election year. Okay. And, and I would fear to say that they're going to be doing everything they can do to spark the economy during the election year, which, you know, leads me to believe that there's maybe a possibility we'll see rate cuts, but I don't want to speculate there. And it doesn't matter. That's the cool thing for us. Because why? Closings happen every day, no matter what. None of this matters. Your day-to-day doesn't change. You talk to people, see what they want to do, help them do what they want to do, put them in your database forever, nurture them forever, build your personal brand, build your influence, build the footprint, your footprint in the market, and go out there and try to get to your goals, which I don't know. Mine was always a million bucks a year. Took me 15 years to do that. You can do it way faster now because you've got guys like me and other people who are literally giving you everything on a silver platter to go out there and do it. So that's the environment of the current market. Was that too much? No, I think that was perfect. We just wanted to hear, I mean, we are hearing a lot of things primarily, but the fact that the market is not going to be slowing down and next year it's going to pick up. We just wanted to hear on the other side of the United States, obviously you're talking to different teams all over the United States, and we wanted to see how is it going there. Yeah, like really, really local, right? Real estate is super local. So you have to dig into the local analytics on all this stuff, obviously. When you talk national numbers, it's pretty general. It's pretty broad. It gives you a nice little picture of what's happening, but you could look at national numbers and it'd be completely different than local numbers in certain markets. So you definitely have to have to dig into the localities of it. It's a pretty mixed bag. Some agents will tell me it's really slowing down, moving into the fall in some markets and then other markets, it's still really hot. So it just kind of depends on where you are. But again, as an agent, it doesn't matter. Our job is to build our database. That's your job, which means what? It means make friends with people in the market. So if the market slows down, here's how you take advantage of cycles. When the market slows down, you lean into prospecting. When it's busy and you're selling stuff and you're showing property every day and go to listing appointments and doing all that, because of all the work you did prospecting for the last three months when it was slow, you don't have time to make calls, which is fine, because now you're reaping the harvest of your work. But when it slows down, you got to switch over and lean back into prospecting. This is where the problem lies and why agents stay average forever. They never take advantage of the market cycles throughout the year and throughout the decades. They just keep doing the same stuff, like most agents buy leads. Well, when the market slows down, the buyer leads dry up, but they still sit there and they just kind of like, why don't leads to come in, even though none's coming in? And they just say, oh man, the market's bad. When they need to be calling their ass off, they need to be calling sellers, they need to be like on the phone eight hours a day. Otherwise, you don't, what are you doing? For me, lead gen is very simple. It's, every single lead gen activity is designed to create a list of people for you to call. Real simple activity, right? So what you have to do is figure out what your activity is going to be. I don't care what it is. As long as you're talking to and creating at least five new friends a day and putting them in your database, because after five years and 250 working days, that's 6,000 people that should be getting a weekly email from you, by the way. But lead gen is just whatever activity, let's just call it just your activity, this design to create a list of people that you call. You're on YouTube, you do YouTube, great. You're hoping that people call in or you're creating this list of people. Facebook ads, list of people, open house, sign-in sheet, list of people, a sphere of influence, list of people in your phone, cold calling, list of people. It's all a list of people that you call in the market to see what they want to do, why they want to do it, and if they're already working with an agent, what you can do to help them do whatever they're trying to do, stay in touch forever. That's it, super simple. That's why I love cold calling because instead of making videos and buying leads and creating content and doing open houses and sending mail-outs and all that stuff to come right back to just calling a list of people, I can just get a list of people right now with a snap of a finger of exactly who I want to do business with and just call them. That's why I love it, but not everybody's built like that and I do understand. Now the question that I have, I mean you talked about real estate cycles, right? Obviously real estate going up and down and right now we're in a cycle that nobody to know whether it's going to be great next year, two years you set it yourself. So how do you stay positive? What is your advice to the listing agents, buyers, agents? How do you overcome this and after showing the property 10,000 times, losing seven offers to somebody else, how do you keep on growing and still do the same activities or actually double down on the activities that you're doing? Well, because I mean number one, one deal is if you're going to be this super incredibly hyper successful agent, just mega agent, right? One deal that you lost is that really to make it a bracket of your career and all of the achievements that you're set to achieve and the goals you're trying to hit is one deal really the end of it and that's what's going to get you down and take you out. That's not how a top producer thinks. That's not how a future top producer operates. Another thing is that when you lose a deal, I mean, there's a lot of incredible things that happen. Number one, that's just the deal. I've always said relationships over transactions. When you lose the deal, you didn't lose the relationship unless the person got mad at you for some reason, which does happen even if things aren't your fault. That's going to happen. That's okay. They don't want to do business with you anymore. Okay, great. Whatever. You tried. You did right. You're a good person, whatever. There was a miscommunication or they took something the wrong way or maybe they're just crazy. There's a lot of crazy people out there, too, but you can't get down on yourself about losing a few deals here or there, especially in a down market. Remember what I said, if you're keeping your head above water right now and staying in the business and two or three acts in your database over the next six months, you are going to win big. The next thing is as far as not getting down and just realizing the big picture of this thing. Closings are happening every single day, right? You guys should be looking at your MLS hot sheet every day and looking at all the new listings and all the closed deals. It may be down from where it was and all this, but they're happening every day. That should motivate you. You should be like, man, you know, I don't know how many listings happen in your market every day. Let's just say 20. There's 20 people that listed. When you look at new listings, if you go to, say, Redfin and you look at the number of new listings, compared to this year and last year and all that stuff, that dude really needed to use the bathroom. When you look at new listings and you realize, oh, we're down 30%, I'm just throwing a number out there. You should be saying, oh my God, 70% of the same amount of people from last year are listing their property right now. I got to get out there and talk to people and find these people who need to sell, who want to sell, who need a real estate agent, who need my services, right? I don't know. It's a tough business. You're going to have these ups and downs and it's an emotional roller coaster and you lose deals and you get deals and some deals are hard. Some deals are easy. It's just like the people who really master this game just get really good at stomaching these ups and downs and not really getting too excited about things and not really getting too down about things. They stay pretty even kill. When things go wrong, they're like, okay, when you gain enough experience, you're going to realize you're probably going to lose as many deals as you close. You're probably going to lose as many as you close and you just get used to it and you become numb to it. So maybe that helps you guys. Just kind of have more of a top producer mentality. I don't want to say winner or loser mentality. That's not the right word. It's more of like a top producer mentality. No, I do agree with you. I mean, I've been in real estate for 15 years and there were- You're just a baby, man. You're just a baby. I know, but I went through 2009 and I mean, I did pretty well for myself. I mean, I had a couple of years of 30 mil plus closings until I opened up my own brokerage and then I start coaching my team what I've learned and I do agree with you having a thick skin and doesn't- Did I lose a lot of deals? Yes, but I won a lot of deals too. So I like your advice. I do agree with that 100%. Let me ask you another question. What is the best re-bottle to the objection that- I mean, I spoke to a couple of team members, but obviously fall is coming up and the best re-bottle to- I'll wait till spring. Awesome. You have an agent you're going to work with. Number one, okay, you're going to wait till spring. Okay, great. What's got you thinking about buying or selling? Whatever they're looking to do, you know, they're waiting to buy till spring. Okay, great. What's got you thinking about buying in the spring, right? So what you have to do immediately, guys, is start to investigate the situation. Dig deeper. Dig deeper, deeper, deeper. A lot of you are just playing on the surface. A lot of you are just, oh, you want to buy in the spring? Okay, you know, I'll call you then or you want to buy in the spring, you know, and then you try to figure out a way to get them to buy now. It's not- it's not the play. The play is what's got you thinking about buying in the spring. Try to understand what- what their thought process is behind wanting to wait till the spring. That's step number one. You got to understand that before you can even think about what step number two is. Until we know that, we don't know what the next step is. They could be saying, like, they're waiting till the spring because their daughter's graduating in, you know, in December from college and they- they want- they have three months where they want to kind of just chill in the old house for a while and then that, you know, like, it might be a legitimate thing they're waiting till the spring, right? Or it may be a market thing. Oh, we think the market's going to be better to buy in the spring. It'll be more inventory or we think rates will be better or we think prices will be lower or whatever they think about the market. We don't know what's- what's behind them saying this. And that's why I'm trying to drill into you guys' head right now, that you don't know how to respond to the rebuttal because you don't- that's not the- that's not the objection yet. You don't know what the objection is. I don't know how to wait till spring, okay? That doesn't tell me that- I don't know how to handle that because I have to dig deeper into what's going on behind the scenes in their mind. What's their mentality? What's their philosophy there? What- what's their- is there a real strategic move? Is it because- or maybe they're blowing smoke at you, right? I would say more than half the people that say that are just trying to tell you as the real estate agent what they think you want to hear to get you off the phone with no intentions to do anything in the spring. That's part- that- that- that's- that's also like probably even the highest probability scenario, right? So like that's- that's step number one. Let's say you go down that road and you figure it all out and they're legitimate. They want to buy. They want to buy now. They want to buy later. Whatever that case ends up being, great. Are you already working with an agent on that? Do you have somebody you're working with on that? Okay, so step one is discovery. How- why are they- why are they- what's got them thinking about doing this then? Okay, step two is great is- could I be your agent, right? Establish yourself as their agent. Do you have an agent? Do you not have an agent? I'd love to work with you. Let's work together. I'm an agent. Let's- okay, yeah, we're working together. Establish yourself as the agent. That's step number two. Step number three is, where do we go from here? Are we sitting on properties? Are we going to go look at properties? You're going to come look at their house? You know, you know, just kind of depends on where- where, you know, what the situation actually is of what that next step of action is. But that's the process. Rikki, hi. This is Miriam from Sevilla. I've been the one speaking with you. How are you? Thank you so much for coming here. Oh, good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Rikki. That was really great because you hit the nail on the head with that. I'm so glad you brought that up because I do and did just this week share that exact sentiment with my team because when you're hearing that, when you're hearing that, right, a lot of people, a lot of newbies tend to say, okay, you know, I'll call you in the spring or whatever instead of digging deep. So thank you for that. My question is this, since we're inside sales, and that's myself, Gabby and Savina, and I'm growing my team, I'm finding that as of late due to the market and the scarcity of homes, fizzbows, which normally haven't been a challenge for me since I started with Roman in the beginning, obviously, they were challenged and I mastered them. Now they are such a challenge for me that I can't get, you know, of the listing agents putting the door on one of them lately. What advice do you have in this type of market for when we call fizzbows from Zillow? Never. Okay. That's exactly what I was thinking of. So you listen, there's a lot of agents that have made a career out of for-sell-by-owners. I actually have a guy that has like 40 for-sell-by-owner listings right now. He closes like one or two a week, like it's all for-sell-by-owners. He's just a master. Some people master that process and the for-sell-by-owner process is such a babysitting situation because you literally have to call them once a week and just continue like how's it going and continue that and kind of drag that relationship out until they decide to throw the towel in. They're very anti-agent in the beginning and then you call them, you stay in touch with them, and they eventually list and you have to call them. That was just never very attractive to me. I didn't want to have to like follow up. There's so much follow-up with for-sell-by-owners and so I was just never a big fan of that. I felt like it was just kind of too much work for me and then some of them actually sell it on their own. Some of them, you know, take it off the market or they go with other agents. It was just for me, just, you know, and again, remember what I said, guys, like Lee Jen is just an activity you choose that works great for you to create a list of people to call. So for sell-by-owners, your thing, go crush it. Like something like works for everyone. Just going to figure out what works for you. What I really like is expireds and when I say expireds, I'm talking about like six months, 12 months, 18 months old expireds with drawings and cancels. I have such incredible conversations with those prospects because it's really cool because you call them, you know, and you do your intro and all your scripty things and then it's like, you know, I won't take it too much of your time, but to see you were trying to sell this house at one point, you know, whatever happened with that. And it turns from like a sales call to you being a detective trying to figure out this mystery to them trying to help you solve the puzzle. Like the whole thing reverses and now they're like literally like trying to help you now figure out what happened with this house, whether they sold it at that point, whether they still have it, rented it, whether they moved, whatever is going on with it, they start to tell you this story. And now you got them because now they're talking, they feel comfortable. They're trying to help you figure out the solve this problem, solve this situation. And now you're able to take it to present day. Right? Oh, you sold it. Great. Where'd you move to? How do you like it? Do you buy rental properties? Right? When do you think you might move again? Is there anything I could do to help you? Do you have an agent you're going to work with? Yeah, I love to stay in touch forever in case you ever want to do something. It's just incredible conversations. And I've got another agent. She also has like 30 something active listings calling these, you know, 6, 12, 18 month old expires. I like to go back 10 years worth. I like to just go back 10 years worth. And that way I have this database literally for the rest, like I have enough leads for the rest of my life right there when I do that. And you can do that automatically. I was going to tell you guys, I just put a link in the chat. If you guys want to grab it, I'm doing an all day workshop next Friday, the 18th via Zoom. It's free all day. Let's see. You guys are in Eastern. So that's going to be 10 to 5, 10 in the morning to 5. And I'm going to go through morning routine, look at an MLS hot sheet, my mentality there, looking up phone numbers, if you don't have a list, we're going to role play, make sure everybody has the scripts down, then we're going to make calls together for like an hour and a half. The whole group, I've got 1500 agents registered for this thing right now. So it's going to be big. But I'm going to make everyone make calls during the day. Then we're going to talk about what happened on the calls and, you know, they're going to people are going to tell us their big breakthroughs, like any great conversations they had and stuff like that. And then I'm going to do market insights and a huge Q&A session. But you guys should come to that if you want to up your game prospecting and kind of spend the day with this and stuff. It's going to be really cool. No, we definitely are going to join. That's a must. Yeah, we're going to definitely do that. Certainly my IS 18 room. Yeah, it's going to be good. I know we're crunching time really quick. Last question. I know that you're using Redx versus Mojo. Why? Just better data, better systems, user friendly, more features. Oh, it's just better all around. Have you ever used batch leaves, Ricky? No, that's one I don't think we've used. So we take all of them. So we do Mojo, Redx, Vortex, I mean, Vulcan, Expresso. There's a couple others and we test them every year. I have a group of agents and we do a test. So we do like a two week test where I have like a group of agents and we use all the different, you know, because we want to make sure we're on the cutting edge with the best data, you know, the best technology, the best software and all that stuff. And Redx just always crushes everybody else, you know, is our consensus for the group. So but it doesn't matter. Okay, doesn't matter what you use, who you use, where you get, whatever and how you do it. The point is, is that you've got some kind of mechanism that creates a list of people that you call. You create five new friends a day and you do something in terms of a weekly email or something where they never forget who you are and you're continuing to bring them value. You guys can actually see, like, you guys can see my weekly emails. If you go to startmyweeklyemail.com, you can actually see all the emails every week that I sent out to my clients since November. That's all I've ever done is a weekly email. I still close 100 deals a year. I quit prospecting in 2017, still close 100 deals every year. No social media, no, you know, drip campaigns, no direct mail, no checking on people, no nothing. Just do the weekly email. Well, that's because we all watch your YouTube videos. I learned so much from you in the beginning of this business. So thank you. And I'm so glad to be speaking with you. Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you for that. And I'm glad. That's the whole purpose. Yeah, I learned a lot from you. Good question. Really, last, last question. What do you think about probing? About what? Probing? Like people that died, those kind of properties? Yes. I don't really care what you do, right? I think at the end of the day, everything works. You know, whatever gets you jazzed up to go call people and call property owners, you know, is what you should do, you know? Like, for me, they're all the same leads, right? Like, when I look at Zillow and Facebook and like all the cold calling methods for sell by owners and expires and circle prospecting and probate and pre-foreclosures for rent by owners. And when I look at open houses and like Mel, you know, send direct mail and get people to call you, all these people, you know, Zillow sold 137 million leads last year, 137 million leads last year. And there was five million transactions. Now, they didn't sell the lead that did all those deals. Let's say they sold the leads that did like, I don't know what, 3, 4, 5%, 10% at the most of those deals. Like, they, the out of those leads they sold, they probably had what, couple hundred thousand closing, something like that, couple hundred thousand and they sold 137 million leads to you guys. Who gets Zillow leads? Oh, that's beautiful. Oh, okay. We got some, some, some shy people there who don't want to admit it. It's the same exact people, right? Zillow is the same people that, I mean, well, I mean, there's 330 million people in the US or something like that, right? They sold 137 million of those people, you know, whose contact information to you for a god-awful amount that didn't buy. You could get, you could, and that's random people. You could get the exact person you want to talk to for less than a penny. Like, they already own the property and call them and have the same exact conversation. It's insane. I think about it like this too, when I think about like, YouTube agents and Zillow and all the buyer-based businesses, right? Right? These are buyer-based businesses. I know a guy that did 80 million last year, all on YouTube, and 98% of those deals were buyers, he told me. He has a team of like 20 people, right? And like, I don't know what he makes, couple hundred thousand. He may sold 80 million, but he probably made a couple hundred thousand himself. I think about the buyer-based businesses and I think, and I've just been a single agent my whole time. I'm just over here cranking out a hundred deals a year, just two deals a week, very effortlessly, right? Working like 10, 15 hours a week on my real estate business. And I think about when I'm at home, seven o'clock, eating dinner with my family, chilling. Somebody's out there showing eight of my 25 listings while I'm just chilling. So I'm going to let the Zillow and the YouTubers and all those people that want to get out there and get all those buyer leads, I'm going to let them do all the work at seven o'clock because I'm going to make seven, I'm going to make, everybody makes money at seven o'clock at night. All of us are making money at seven o'clock at night. It's just your decision if you're going to be the one out on the streets or if you're going to be the one home chilling because you've leveraged the fact that you work property owners, not, not because you want to be a listing agent because remember, property owners are the highest quality buyers. You know, I represented a good 20, 30% of my business over my career has been buyers, but guess what? They were all owners who bought and those are beautiful. Those are easy. They already know the process. I'm not running them all around town. They already know which property they want. It's just like you're just processing. You're just servicing them at that point. But just think about that, guys. Like, are you going to, are you going to be more of a buyer based business where you're the one or somebody on your team who you're giving half the money to is going to be running around at seven o'clock at night? Or are you going to, are you going to be the single agent collecting all the money 100% on those deals because you found the efficiency and you weren't scared to call property owners and say, hey, I'm a neighbor of yours in the area and I'm a real estate agent. I'm just calling to see if there's something I could do to help you. It's not, it's not any different. People just make it harder than it is, right? I'm looking for, like, the easy way out. Oh, I need, you know, these leads coming in. Well, now you're dependent on somebody else to give you leads. And when the market dries up like it has, those leads are going to dry up. Versus, if you know how to create leads out of thin air on just, I could, I could get off this call and take 30 minutes and get two or three leads. Just have a thin air. When you can do that, it doesn't matter what the market's doing. You're just out there just crushing it. So think about that too. Anyway, guys, any other last minute questions? I guess for the seller side and the buyer side, what are the, what would you say, one or two best lead generation tools? I mean, the seller side is calling and you're saying expired, right? That's my favorite, bro. Like, you can get so, like, with Redx, you can go back like 10 years worth. Actually, I'm going to find this link. I did a training on this. It's really good. I actually did a demo and showed you how to go back 10 years worth. Let me grab that link and you can share it with the team. And I think I actually made some live calls on that. I want to say I did. I may or may not have, but let me grab that and I'll get that to you. That's my favorite because I can go back 10 years worth and literally have more leads than I could ever call. Let's see. Let me get this for you right here. There you go. And it's such an easy conversation because it's just like, hey, you know, it's like, hey, Mr. Johnson, hey, Mr. Johnson, Ricky Kruth, whatever real estate and whatever area, how are you doing today? Call me to him and join the day isn't it gorgeous? Great. Well, listen, man, listen, I just want to, I didn't want to take it too much of your time, but I see at one point you were trying to sell this house on Newberry Lane. I was just calling to see it like whatever happened with that. And then boom, they just like, it's crazy. It's magical. They just like start telling you this amazing story about what happened, where they are now, what's going on. And you just have a conversation with people and figure out what it is they want to do now. And if you can help them do it, it's so easy. That's my fave. That's been like the easiest conversations. I built my entire business on Circle Prospect and just calling random property owners. I mean, it was targeted. I was calling specific subdivisions and stuff, but like out of the blue, like they just own a property, just call them out of the blue and talk to them. That's how I built my entire career. I didn't have all this technology and go back 10 years worth of expires and all that stuff like you guys do. And it's crazy because none of you are even utilizing it. Like the whole premise of the business is to talk to as many people as you can, create relationships and help them buy and sell for the rest of their life. And you've got all this technology where you can just have just hundreds of conversations like daily and you're not even using it. It's nuts. But yeah, I don't know anything better, honestly. Until somebody tells me something better than calling the exact property owner you want to do business with for less than a penny and creating friendship for life and then doing a weekly email like a custom weekly email to them forever. Until somebody tells me a better system than that, then I'm not, when I find something better, I'll start preaching something, I'll preach something different. But until then, it's just so simple. Thank you so much, Ricky. Hi, guys. All right. All right. Good stuff. Good stuff. You guys go out there and crush it. Hopefully I'll see you guys on the workshop next week and we can make some calls together. And yeah, let me know if you guys have any other questions or anything else I could do to help you. Love you guys so much. Talk to you soon.