KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Cold Calling Is Not The Only Way for REALTORS

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

When I, you know, look at an agent, I can't say, oh, Cole call is the only way, or social media is the only way, or direct mail or door knocking, or whatever it is. There's so much market share. You have so much time on your hands because you're not doing a ton of transactions. You have time to actually talk to more people in the market that don't know who you are to make that introduction, plant those seeds, put them in your database, remark it to them forever. And you're right. There's so many different ways to lead Jen. And what I realized is the reason why a lot of people struggles, because they try to do all of them. You know, how many people can you talk to per day for the next three to five years? And then you never have to prospect another day in your life. And the problem is most people don't, I guess, don't have a big enough why. When I was coming up, my why was I'm going to bank a million bucks. But at the end of the day, everything comes back to just

talking to people in your market, building relationships, helping them by and sell, remarketing to now. And good morning. We're back and with Ricky Caruth, who is top agent coach, author, Zero to Diamond, the only real free coach in the country. Am I correct with that still, Ricky? So far. Awesome, man. Great to hear it. So I ask everybody the same question as we get started on this broadcast today. And I'm really excited to have you here. So I've got so much stuff I want to talk about. So I got to slow down a little bit with what's going on. I mean, you're a legend in your own time. You really great stuff. But I got to ask you this, what does TGIF stand for? TGIF, man, I ate there a couple times. It was pretty good. It was pretty good.

Yeah, well, it means a little bit different on this broadcast. It means thank God it's finale. So here we are. And if we take it to the TGIC, it would be thank God it's Carruths, but it's not. It's finale. So anyway, man, let's get right down to it. I mean, you know, There's a lot of things going on in our business. It's been huge, huge differences in our business in 2023. And this is being broadcast October 27, 2023, for those that watch this later. So you get a timestamp on it. There's so many things going on in our business, Ricky.

And, you know, nothing that's, one thing that has never changed is that listings are king. I mean, everybody wants, everybody should be looking at listings to really control their business. And I know you would agree with that. What, I mean, you've got some, you've got some, some things that you've been doing to help agents. You're doing. Talk a little bit about what you're doing, uh, to push agents and to help agents along and go from there. Well, I mean, I've been through this before, you know, as far as this shift. Right.

You know, when you go through a massive shift, um, you kind of learn how to handle a shift. And so a lot of agents that have never been through a shift, you know, they continue to try to do the same stuff over and over. through the shift. They kind of ignore things are shifting and they don't really go with the flow of the shift. The whole thing is to move like water and to kind of understand

there's going to be ebbs and flows in the market year by year and to kind of be mentally prepared for that massive shift. This year we're going to have the same amount of transactions as 2008. I mean, this is 2008. The only reason prices haven't went down because the regulations are mortgages that they put in place after 2008

and all the institutional and non-institutional investors that are out there who value these properties at a very high price based on the ROI of rent. So, you know, it's a very interesting place. And what it comes back to is that closings never stop. It's never going to go to zero. Prices are never going to go to zero. You know, it's going to ebb and flow every year, up, down, sideways, left, right. But the constant remains the same. Closings are happening and people need agents to help them through those transactions.

So once you realize that, you kind of get a little bit of relief from this whole, my business could, you know, implode over the market crashing on me. No, it can't. If you slow down with the market, it does. Right. You know, right now we're in the middle of, we're not in the middle. We're at the bottom of our 10-year housing cycle, right? That happens every 10 to 15 years.

We're at the bottom of our yearly housing cycle where every fall prices soften, you know, new listing spike, days on the market go up. up, et cetera. The market always softens this time of year, generally, you know, nationwide. And we're in the middle of this down, the down of the 10-year cycle. So it's the best of both worlds where we're not only down decade-wise, but we're down year-wise, right the second. And when the bottom, when the market's at its very bottom peak when it comes to certainly transactions, that is the most opportunistic time for agents to expand their business. Why?

Well, a lot of agents aren't doing much, number one. There's so much market share. You have so much time on your hands because you're not doing a ton of transactions. You have time to actually talk to more people in the market that don't know who you are to make that introduction, plant those seeds, put them in your database, remark it to them forever. When you're busy and the market's great, you don't have time as much time to really prospect and talk to a lot of new people and make those, you know, new relationships and plant those seeds. So you're kind of more just servicing and closing deals on the market's great,

but when the market's down, you've got time to really expand. And you expand for the next surge. You know, when the market's down, you expand your footprint in your market. And when the market surges, your business, you know, benefits from the expansion that you, that you created during the downtime. And that's how you make more and more money every year. But it's even more insanely opportunistic right now because you've got the best of both worlds. The decade cycle is at its low and the yearly cycle all at the same time. So it's extremely slow right now compared to, you know, other years. It just gives you so much opportunity to really put a plan in place to talk to more property owners and get to know them to really expand your brand.

And the market's going to bounce back very violently. the demographics of homebuyers are it's we there's more pent up demand than we've ever seen in history you've got more first time home buyers out there who want to own a home than we've ever had I say ever you know maybe when the baby boomers were coming up right um however you also have uh the trade up sellers who are locked into lower interest rates who really want to move okay they want to buy. That's, that's demand. That's pent up demand. When somebody wants to buy, but they can't, that's called pent up demand. So you got so many sellers who want to sell but can't because they're locked into these lower rates. That's pent up demand. So you get first time homebuyers. You got

trade up sellers and you have investors who are also sitting on the sidelines right now who want to invest, but they don't know whether the market's going to go down. They don't know if prices are going to go down if now is the absolute best time to jump in interest rates are really high dude you this is like monument this is historic right now as far as the amount of people that want to buy that can't it's it's and you we don't even know because we have we've never really experienced this much pent up demand you know in our lifetime let's just say um so it's going to be a violent rebound and what what i think will happen is when a wrench when mortgage rates eventually do drop which i don't know could go to 12 before they go to six. I don't know. They could stay around eight for another two years. I don't know. They could go down to, you know, five and a half next year. I don't know. But when interest rates do drop, what we're going to see is the trade up seller list and buy. So that's a net even for active listings. You're going to see first time homebuyers take properties off the market, taking active listings from bad to worse. And so we're going to see this rush of new listings. And so we're going to see this rush of new listings. You're going to see. And so,

listings rush of transactions. Prices will increase, not double digits. I think we'll get back to the regular, you know, two to four, three to five percent appreciation. Right. But inventory is going to get from, go from bad to worse. And we're going to hit a new all time. We're at all time lows right now inventory wise, all time lows from as far back as they can track it. And we're going to go even lower, I believe, when, you know, when the, when the, when the day finally comes and interest rates come down, you know, and prices will get back to a normal increase every year. It's really exciting, honestly. I mean, if you're an agent, if you're an investor, if you're a homeowner, the market is a very exciting place for you. The only place, the only person that's, it's not that

exciting for are first-time homebuyers, you know, and affordability is about as worse as it's ever been. So that's the, that's the downside of this. But, you know um what does that so rickie the way i look at this is 2008 but i think it's a little bit worse because there was a lot there was opportunity there for home buyers and sales when it came to short sales etc etc as time went on but being being on opportune time and the most opportune time we've seen to build the business i i think is spot on what you're saying i mean there's so much opportunity in there a lot of and the people that are going to grow their business as far as the agents are concerned need to see a day

downtime as the opportunity, as you just said, to build your database, to build relationships, et cetera, which leads me to, you know, one of the most important questions that we need to answer, I try to answer for agents I work with on a daily basis is lead generation, right? So there's so many different ways of lead generation. And, you know, one of the things I saw that you had done is lead generation for the next generation. What is right? And talk to me a little bit about where you believe lead generation should be or or what is the best lead generation for any anybody right now, new agents and stock agents. Yeah. So the lead generation for the next generation, I didn't know what it was either. I didn't know if I was supposed to talk about, you know, attracting Gen Z like the next generation to you, you know, through social media channels and AI. or if it was to teach, you know, Gen Z agents how to build their business.

Right. So at the end of the day, I decided that it was how to teach the next generation how to build their business. Right. And you're right. There's so many different ways to lead Jen. And what I realized was the reason why a lot of people struggle is because they try to do all of them, right? Or at least all of them that doesn't involve cold calling, right? And you can only really be great at a couple things.

So people are so worried about the business or losing over here, you know, let's just say making videos. They're so worried they're losing business by not making videos. You know, they throw that in the mix. They're so worried about the business they're not getting from, you know, doing handwritten letters so they throw that in the mix. You know, and they're cold calling and they're buying zill leads and they're doing all these things. So they're not really mastering or not really going all in on something. And I think for the next generation, it's going to be a matter of trying to nail down efficiency behind what works the best for you.

And let me go all in on that and just throw all this other stuff away, right? Even though we could be losing business here, we're really maximizing this to really a place where we've got more business than we can handle. I think that's the key. That's what I did anyways coming up. I hammered one thing and I had more business that I can handle at all times. And that that's really the key is just maximizing what you can handle. So when I, you know, look at an agent, I can't say, oh, Cole Collins is the only way or social media is the only way or direct mail or door knocking or networking or whatever it is.

You know, it's different for everyone, you know, and that's where they're working is in the business. I haven't heard a single legion strategy that didn't make sense. somebody a million dollars a year, you know, not a single one of them. And so it just, it makes me think like, you know, I can't go in and say, oh, you should call call. You should call owners. You should call expired. You should do for sale by owners. You should write letters. You should do social media. I don't know what you should do, right? That's where the work comes in. Here's all the ways you can lead, Jen. Okay, you've got to identify what the top one or two strategies are. that produce massive amount of conversations and when i realized it was about conversations

it was over for me because i was just like oh i can skip all the marketing and i could just go i can go right back door on this whole thing and just talk directly to the owners for literally a penny right i'm not going to do anything else that that was my mentality is i can just skip all the time money and energy people agents spend on marketing and open houses and ads and zillow leads and all that i can skip all that money, time, and energy. And I can just talk to a property owner right now for a penny. And that's the goal anyway, right? Any marketing is really the objective is to have a conversation with a property owner

or maybe a consumer, a buyer, whatever. And by the way, it's like, I'll ask an audience, would you rather have 30 active listings or 30 active buyers? What do you think the answer is? It's going to be listings all the time. Right. And so, but 95% of them, all of their activities are. are geared towards attracting buyers to their business.

Right. So there's a huge disconnect and what they would like to have versus what they're doing. And that's a problem. You know, buyers aren't like, I take buyers, 20% of my business for my entire career is buyers. But where do the buyers come from? It came from property owners who are now buying or a property owner's mom or a buyer that called me on a sign from a listing. It's all buyers that came from having listings or, you know,

prospecting owners. You can choose what you want to do. Why are you choosing something that you don't really want, you know, versus you could spend less money going after, you know, listings. So I don't know. Everybody's different, you know?

That's what I've come to realize. Everybody's different. Everybody has to figure out what works best for them. What works best for somebody I may disagree with because, you know, I'm pretty hardcore, you know, but, you know, that's what makes the world go around. So we have to kind of conform to the fact that everybody's different. So I see a lot of frustration and a lot of agents, Ricky, where, you know, they make calls and they get appointments and they don't convert.

Or they're making calls and, you know, they're just telling people how great they are during the call. And I've seen so much frustration and people want to quit the business because, they're not you're not getting anywhere yeah you know we are getting somewhere see the thing is is convert okay it's like okay what's your definition of convert and most agents is get the listing right well a listing is the byproduct of building the relationship and figure out what they want to do and why and trying to put together a plan to help them accomplish whatever it is they're trying to do a listing is just a byproduct of you trying to help solve their problems and help them through their situation Right.

The conversion needs to be not the listing, but that you made a friend with this person, a lifelong friendship with this person and somewhat solidified yourself as their agent when they get ready to do something, whether it now, later, a year, five years, whatever it is. So I think people have the wrong definition of conversion. I think that they get discouraged because they're not making money when they need to realize. this is a career they're building. And everybody, when you're talking to a prospect, you're really talking to about 30 or 40 people. Because that prospect, okay, over the course of 10 years,

turns into repeat business, referrals, and referrals of referrals. People are thinking so singular. It's like, okay, I'm talking to this prospect and trying to do this one deal. No, you're not. You're trying to solidify 20 deals over the next 10 years through this one person.

You don't understand how the snowball happens and how the compounding happens from this one person. People are thinking so singler number one. They're thinking so short term number two and they're just money driven. It's like if you can't pay your bills, get a job and have have your bills paid for while you're building this business, right? Building the business doesn't mean making money, right? Amazon lost money forever.

All these companies lost money forever, right? That didn't mean that they weren't building a business, right? Sometimes you don't make money when you're building a business. So you need to think, I'm building a business. What is building a business? Building a business is building clientele that's going to do business with you, now or later, you know, just because somebody doesn't do a deal with you today or even chooses a different agent.

That's okay. People are going to choose other agents. People are not going to do business with you today. People are going to do business with you today. You know, and it takes time to really learn the process. It really does. I mean, the important part, as you said, Ricky, I mean, get a job and do it, pick one thing, right? Get a job. Like, for instance, building your database, building a database of your sphere of influence, let's say, right? Which is, I believe, to be the number one most important thing that most agencies need to have, along with one or two other lead gen systems or processes that want to use. And one of the things that you've said, and one of the things that Bill Pipes has said is when you grow your database to a certain number, then you don't have the prospect anymore because it's all coming, get it business, et cetera, right? But I think that the thing that you said, I just want

to say it again, is that if you're getting started and you're looking to get business today, to get paid tomorrow, unfortunately, that's difficult, but you know, you need to be able to pay your bills too and to do that. And I recently had a gentleman I work with, you know, saying, well, maybe this isn't for me. I said, no, what you've got to do is you got to continue with that part-time job that you've got to. and make sure that you make money to take care of your family and then do this and schedule it. How important is that schedule? How important is that calendar?

Because I always tell agents, you need to be calendared to move forward to be able to get things done. How important is that, Ricky? Well, it's almost to the point where if you have to say that to someone, okay, if you have to explain to them that you need to be, you know, you need to work all day and be productive and do stuff, It's almost like, I don't, yeah, yeah, sorry, I don't, I don't know that you're going to make it in the business. If I have to tell you that, that should be like common sense. We all kind of grow up and we go to school and we go to school from whatever, eight to three, you know, and then we go to some kind of sports practice or something. You know, we're busy from like eight to five every day as kids in school, right?

Get out of school and, you know, you either go get a job or go to college. in the summers you do you do a job normally where you know you you work in right right um and and that could be part of the problem is is when you go to that w2 job you get paid to just show up whether there's any production or not and when you come a job as a real estate agent you get paid only on production so that that that's a that's that's a that's a shock right to most people you know i actually have to produce results to get paid here versus well i used to just be able to show up and clock in But my point is, is that we grow up in this environment where, you know, we have to, you know, go go somewhere early, produce all day, work hard. If I have to tell you that you've got to get up and come to work, you know, then what are we doing here?

You know? Exactly. You need to go to more of like, you know, more of like a life therapist at that point than a real estate coach. You need to get your, get your stuff together, you know. Well, no, I agree. I agree with you 100%. It's why I ask the question. I mean, it's just all about, you know,

knowing what you're going to do in using your time. So I'll typically ask an agent, okay, so what are you doing today? Yeah. Right? And if, well, I'm going to do a little of this, a little of that. That's not a schedule to me. That's not a calendar to me. A lot of agents do whatever, whenever.

Right. And they never make it. I mean, you have to understand that the object here is to build a career. To get to a million bucks a year, you've got to have thousands of one-on-one conversations with people in your market that could be over the next five years. I mean, if you talk to 10, 15 people a day and you make five new friends, in five years, you've got 6,000 people that you made friends with. If you're doing the weekly email or you're remarketing to them in some form or fashion where those 6,000 people never forget who you are,

even if it's 5, 10 years down the road, they still see yourself and remember you. You're going to have a massive business. The quicker you can have those thousands of conversations, most people, avoid the conversation. And so they drag those thousands of conversations. Well, they never even have. I mean, even all the way until they die, I saw two agents pass away making calls. They were still trying to sell some for sale by owners when they're on the deathbed.

You know, once you realize that it's as simple as this, have conversations, help people, build relationships, have some system on the back end where they never forget who you are, you're golden, right? Then it's just a race to how many, you know, how many people can you talk to per day for the next three to five years? And then you never have to prospect another day in your life. Exactly. I mean, here's the thing.

I mean, you know, I look at calendar. I look at schedule. Like, for instance, Ricky, I know what I'm doing three Wednesdays from now or three Fridays from now. I know what I'm doing because I've got myself set up. Is that boring? Is that monotonous? It might be for some.

I don't know. I don't know. I see it as exciting, right? I mean, like, I have job security. I know what I'm doing next week, the week after, and it all involves helping people and providing a service, giving value to my people and making money in return. So for me, that's exciting, especially if you're in it, right?

If you're, if you're, if this is a moment in your life where you're in it and you still love this, and, you know, you, you, you're, you're sacrificing these years to really build it out. and build some wealth, you know, I mean, you have different stages in your life. Later on, you may not want a schedule. You may not want to be busy and be locked up. You want to have free time and stuff, you know, but when you're building your business, you got to think, I'm going to put in 10, 15 hours a day if I got to.

Here's the problem. Most people don't have a big enough why. If you're not making call, if you're like, oh, you know, I just, I don't want to make calls. I don't like making calls. I don't like making calls. Or, you know, I don't like making video. I'm not good on video.

You don't have something that you're chasing that's big enough to make you say, you know what? I'm willing to do anything. I don't care what it is. I will do anything to succeed and to make my dreams come true. And the problem is most people don't, I guess, don't have a big enough why. When I was coming up, my why was I'm going to bank a million bucks. I wanted it so bad.

I was willing to do anything. I didn't care what it was. You could have had, I would have swam with the alligators. It doesn't matter to me what, what it is. Right. I was going to do whatever you put in front of me. Nothing was going to stop me. And most people don't have that.

They're not like, oh, I'm willing to do whatever. I'll call lawyers. I'll call, I'll call, call owners. I'll do, I was willing to do whatever. I said this on a podcast on a, on a Zoom yesterday. When I was 10 years old, I had this premonition that I was going to be great at something, make a lot of money, and then. turn around and help people. At 10 years old, I had this vision. And my whole life has been

pursuing that vision. I didn't know it was going to be real estate. I didn't know it was going to be real estate agents that I was going to help. But that's the vehicle that ended up appearing in front of me somehow. I became great to being an agent. I made a lot of money. And then I'm turning around. Dude, I've traveled three times a month and speak. Two out of the last three, I paid out of my pocket, not only for travel, but also I threw it on the event. The one before. that they only paid travel they didn't pay me anything i didn't make anything they just pay for travel like i'm pouring money back into the industry right and in an attempt here to really make a difference right and it's a that that's my why i don't have to do this podcast i could be sleeping right now i could be

hanging out with my daughter i could be on the beach i could be on vacate i could do anything i want to do i'm i'm done financially but my why is still so big that i'm willing to do anything and that's how these agents need to be if they really want to build a massive business. Right. So, you know, I'm going to look at that big why. And that's, I got to tell you, be honest with you, it's always been a struggle for me because I've done, I've done a lot of different things to this business for more than 40 years. And I've been successful at it. And now it's like I said, you know, like you said, I don't have to do this. I don't have to do this broadcast more than five years in a row every week. I don't have to do that. And I do it because I want to be able to give back. I want

to make a difference. And when it comes to my own personal business, I've just scrapped everything and I've started a new project. And it's funny, when people started a new project, it's like, what's my why? I'm trying to think, but why do I, why am I doing this? You mean, I could be playing golf every other day. I could be, you know, I don't know, put it around, maybe go build a house somewhere. It was what I love to do. But I've decided to keep going in this, in this one thing and to see exactly where I want to take it. So I've looked at it this way. looked at what we're doing, and I've said, okay, one transaction from this brand new project I got on, right, from this brand new project. And so now that's where it's at. I mean, this is at its infancy.

It's the NJ Heroes program that I worked on that was on the board a few minutes ago, and it's brand new, something I worked on for years and years. And my why is to help as many people as I can that are heroes. I got to start with one and go from there. Does that philosophy, of you. Does that, does that manner of speaking the way to go with that? Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, exactly, man. I mean, you got to have, you know, some of these agents have a spouse that make a lot of money or they're going to get a big inheritance in, you know, in eight years, or they're just kind of comfortable or whatever, right? And they don't have that desire that, you know what, I'm willing to do anything in the world, you know, put anything in front of me.

that's how you have to be in real estate. When you've got 90% of agents who fail, you've got to be one that's just ruthless and just willing to, you know, do whatever it takes. I mean, that's really just kind of what it boils down to. And you can dance around it all you want to.

But at the end of the day, everything comes back to just talking to people in your market, building relationships, helping them buy and sell, remarketing to them. You know, and you can make those systems so simple where you could literally do it as a single agent.

I mean, I did 100 deals a year. for eight years in a row, a single agent with one admin. I was the buyer agent. I was a listing agent. I went to the closings. I did the inspections and all that stuff.

Prospecting, follow up. It was all me. Right. Because I had simple systems and I understood efficiency around 100% focusing on property owners. So as a single agent, I mean, tell me about the days that you had trouble getting going. Talk about that because no one hears that. We see it.

You and I see it. with agents where they have trouble getting on. I just talked about something like that a few minutes ago. You're going to have ups and downs, right? You're just, you're going to have, you're going to have, it's not going to be all just awesome. You're going to have days you come in when you're fired up. You're going to have days you come in that you just don't feel like being there.

We all have those days. I had a day like that. Monday, I think. We got back from Miami Saturday and like the time adjustment and stuff. And Monday, I was just kind of dead. It just didn't really feel like being here and doing the videos. everything, but, you know, I went through the motions. I made it through the, I think when you have days like, okay, this is one of these days. You just kind of go through the motions. You're not

too hard on yourself. You're not like, oh, man, I didn't crush it today. It's okay. You can have days you don't crush it. Go through the motions, you know, kind of use that day to kind of like scale back a little bit and relax, be, you know, kind of try to enjoy it a little bit and kind of let your mind and your body kind of rest up a little bit by not going so hard. That way you can kind of, you know, rest up a little bit for the next day where you kind of probably will come in a little bit more fired up. But I used to roof houses, bro. And you better believe there's days when you're doing physical labor where you're climbing up on a roof and you're literally a mountain climber hanging by a rope. Your legs are literally tense the whole time, right? You're literally hanging on a roof with your

feet and your arms are moving around laying shingle. So it's not like you have your arms to hang onto the roof. Your arms have to be free. You're working. You're moving shingles. You're moving metal. You're screwing stuff. You're hammering things. You're working. So your legs are the only thing really hanging you on the roof besides the rope that's just kind of pressing you against the roof. And you're literally in a squat position the whole day, every day, you know, six days a week, whatever, you better believe there's days that you show up and you're sore. You don't feel like it. Right. You know, it's tough, hard labor. You're fixing to do this eight more. hours, but guess what? You go up there and you just kind of go through the motions,

get done what you can get done. And so I had a lot of those days. I think everyone should go roof houses for a year. And if you're not in the beginning. And if you're not, you know, I think everyone should roof houses, right? Honestly, roof houses for a year and also serve tables. Because when I served tables, I was able to develop all these people's of walking up, talking to people I don't know, helping them, serving them, you know, making them happy, making them laugh, having conversation. It was amazing for my real estate business to just develop those skills, you know, as a server. Yeah, it is really important to have to develop those skills.

And, you know, we've talked a lot about mindset. I think a couple things that I think, I think there's two things that people need to keep in mind. And they add to each other. And what is integrity? And when you look at that, what does integrity mean to you about yourself? I mean, not to others, even to yourself. And that can be hand in hand with one of my biggest things that I learned a long time ago

is never make an excuse, right? I mean, we can build in, oh, you know what, okay, you're going to have the days that you just talked about. You're going to have those days. There's going to be days where you want to make an excuse. Just don't make the excuse. Have the integrity to not make the excuse and to keep going. And mindset is like, I think, I think probably as I think it was Yogi Berra that said 80% of baseball is 90% mental or something like that.

It was, here's, I think, I think, I think 80% of this business is mindset and everything else is all busy work, right? Because if you've got the mindset to build relationships, that's the most important thing. I want to shift a little bit now because we're a little extended here, which is great. I see a lot of agents that start building their business, say, well, I'm going to get all my business from social media. And, you know, they think, okay, so I'm going to post tomorrow and I'm going to post next week. And Ricky, isn't possible to build your entire business based on social or do you need something else to go with it? And is it done by just doing it every now and then? You can build your all business on social.

I know a lot of agents that sell, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50, even 100 million purely on social media. Um, so yeah, you can do it all on social. Um, they don't have databases. They don't do weekly emails, right? Their databases literally they're following. Um, you know, they have DMs going back and forth. They, um, you know, they, that, that, that, that's where they build their business. And, uh, it's interesting, right, to watch that. But it just goes to what I was saying earlier. Every single. strategy to build your business works. It's about finding what works for you. For these men and women who like master the social media, you know, for to build your real estate business, they're crushing it on there.

Not everybody can figure that out, right? Not everybody is good at that. Not everybody is, you know, have figured out the things and are, their mind doesn't work in a way that, you know, kind of like goes through and tries to put that puzzle together. to figure out exactly how to drive business using social media. But some people do.

So it just depends on the agent, you know, like can anyone do it? Yes. Can everyone do it? No. No. You know, it's got to, you know, it's got to be your thing. And yeah, you know, you can, you can definitely build your business on it. I mean, I know people that don't even really post that much who, who do fantastic because, you know,

they're working groups and they DM people. And they run ads. They don't even really post that much on their page. You know, so again, like, like, building relationships.

Well, there's so many ways to lead gin, okay? And then when you dive into social media, there's so many strategies within social media to drive business, right? You could be organic where you post every day.

You could do Facebook groups. It could be Instagram stories is your thing. You know, cold DMing people in your market, your thing, running ads. YouTube could be your thing. Instagram could be your thing. There's like so many platforms and then so many different ways to use each platform that, you know, it's hard to be like a general blanket statement, right, about all of this. Because it's so customized around each person. and what their strengths and weaknesses are.

But to answer your question, yes, you can build your entire business on social. It is possible without doing anything else. I've seen people do it. And do you need to post often? No, I've seen people create amazing businesses that don't really create that much content. And I've seen people who create tons of content that crush it. I've seen people that create tons of content who sell nothing on social media, right? So, you know, how do you answer the question?

You know, it's a, right? It's a very complex, you know, question. And it's so custom around, you know, each person. I think the one thing that's really important there with this question and this topic is that if you have a strategy, you just have to continue to be consistent with it. And I think that's the number one thing at everything that we do is the consistency and the commitment to where we've decided to, to, to go. And, you know, people will tend to, well, this ain't work and I'm going to give up,

or they buy Zillolese or the Zillolids suck and, you know, yeah, they could. And I know people that literally make a million bucks a year off Zillow leads. Exactly. Right. And I have people that say Facebook sucks and people say cold calling doesn't work. And people say all this stuff. Okay. Well, it's either one or two things. It doesn't work for you because it works great for other people. Okay, so maybe it doesn't work for you or maybe you just suck. Okay. Maybe it's not the Facebook ads or Zillow leads or cold calling that sucks. Maybe it's you that sucks.

Exactly. A hundred percent there. And that segway is basically into the last thing I want to talk about. Now, there is, as I said, this is October 27, 2023 and there's a lot of this stuff going on with lawsuits and fire agency and everything else. And one of the things I've heard you say, Ricky, is that no matter what happens, it's still the same business that you will win either way. Talk to me about that no matter what happens in this suit that's going on right now, that you win either way. Well, that I win or everyone wins. Everyone wins because you're going to do the business anyways, an opportunity.

I mean, listen, it could go so many ways. There's a lot of stuff. So let's say nothing changes. Well, it's just business is normal. Okay. Let's say that it doesn't become a law that you can't pay the buyer agent out of the listing side commission on the HUD. And the buyer agent has to be paid directly for the buyer. Let's say that that doesn't become a law.

But let's say that brokerages to conform so that they're scared to death, they're going to get sued and have to settle out for $50 million, that brokerages make it a policy that they want to allow their agents to pay a buyer broker commission out of the listing side, right? Nobody's thought about this. And that's something that could happen with the snap of a finger. And you better believe that the MLS is changing their buyer broker rule from $1 to zero. And, you know, watching these big brokerages say that, you know,

their agents don't have to be part of NAR anymore. And, you know, remax paying $55 million in a settlement. And anywhere paying $83.5 million in a settlement, you know, isn't opening up the door to some big changes that could happen with a snap of a finger. It doesn't have to become a law, right? It doesn't have to be, oh, the plaintiffs when, you know, the defendants are going to appeal it, it's going to get drug out. court for years and years and we don't have to worry about this right a brokerage could say you know what we're scared to death we're going to get in we're going to get involved in the suit and these class action lawyers that don't understand how the industry works at all are just C dollar signs

they're going to come out trying to make real estate agents look like a scam not realizing that the current model the current system is the best it's kind of like 30 year figure rates. 30 year fixed rates is not in a lot of countries. Well, these other countries are suffering. Why? Because they have short-term rates on mortgages, which means in five years, their payment could double, which is what's happening in a lot of these countries. And they're seeing foreclosures and they're getting crushed. And these people are losing their homes. Now, we have a 30-year fix, which means, okay, people are locked into a lower rate, which means lower inventory, which means prices go up. and there's no inventory. Okay. But wouldn't you want, no system's perfect, but wouldn't you want the system

where people at least have a place to live and they're not getting kicked out of their home and losing their house? It's the same thing with this. Yes, we can take the buyer commission, broker commission out of the equation, sure.

But at that point, there's no incentive for all the buyer agents that are working right now to help the seller sell their homes, to sell their homes. And by the way, when the seller sells the home and pays the 6% and 3 goes to the buyer agent,

guess what? They're going to buy their next home and guess what? They're not coming out of their pocket to pay their buyer broker to represent them. So they're really winning. It's like a net even here. They're paying 6% when they sell, but they're paying nothing when they buy. So they're really paying right now 3% for each. You know what they're doing.

They're making it. It's going to be if this goes through and they're the policies change. The buyer broker agent goes, you know, the commission goes to zero and buyers have to pay their own commission. That one lady that went on the stand, her mom was an agent.

She's like, I bought, I sold four houses and bought five. It's like, well, you got, you paid four commissions and none on five. Okay.

And she said, and her mom was a broker for 30 years, right? She probably, her whole life was paid for by buyer broker commissions. All right. And she's on the stand saying this is, unfair and she says my kids are coming to the age where they're going to buy homes.

Does she realize that she's put her kids in a position? Because she's like, I will help my kid. I'm going to help. If I can help my kids, I'm going to help them. Exactly. Ma'am, do you know that you're putting your kids in a position where they're not going to have representation unless they pay out of their pocket? Do you realize that you're doing that to your kids?

That now they're going to have to pay if they want representation, otherwise not be represented? Do you realize what you're doing? you know, she's like, I'm not doing it for the money. Yeah, right. Why else would you be screwing up a good thing? And that's what they're doing. If this, if this changes the way that we operate as agents, it's really messing up a great thing.

However, if it does change, massive opportunity. Why? Well, I would think a good 20, 30,000, 20% of agents are out the door because they don't, they're not going to understand how to, you know, adapt. to the new world that we're going to live in. Listing agents are going to crush it, but guess what? They're going to do twice to work for half the money. And buyer agents are going to emerge.

You're going to see this emergence of buyer agents who advertise. We only work with buyers, right? We don't even take listings. We're a buyer specialist. And buyers are going to come in and they're going to pay a retainer up front and they're going to pay the rest at closing. And buyer agents are going to be getting paid before the deal even closes. They're going to get paid just to start looking for homes, right?

And it's going to be interesting and it's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be kind of like a new car. You know, you get a new car. You're all excited, this new thing, right? That's what it's going to be. It's going to be different. It's going to be exciting. It's going to be fun.

You know, man, a lot of opportunity. I remember being in this business as long as I've been. I remember when we went from cooperating agents to buy our agency and sell agency and all that stuff. And it was like, what? Huh? Well, people got to realize that in the beginning for years, buyers weren't even represented. Everybody represented the seller.

That's what it was in New Jersey for the various long time. So I want to just get into one last thing, man. You're doing something really great with a lot of ages with your challenging 30 days. Talk about that, man. Talk about what you got going on there. Yeah. So about a month or so ago, I opened up the 30 listing challenge. And it was to go get 30 listings.

And it was really designed to where, even if you've never even got a couple listings in your life, you look at this and you see the plan, how it's laid out. And you think, you know what? I think I can actually go get 30 listings in the next 90 days. Like it makes it feel possible, tangible. And it's 10 from direct mail, handwritten note. It's 10 from expired. It's 10 for sale by owners.

For sale by owners are listing left and right right now. You know, they're overpricing it a little bit. The market's softened. and they're having a hard time back in 21 you couldn't get for sale by owners they were just selling it for 100,000 over asking price of 15 offers now it's things have changed and I got a guy that's listed like 60 for sale by owners this year he's listed 10 not 10 for sale by owners that guy has listed 11 since we started the challenge he's on track to do 30 you know before the end of the year when we started the channel I've got like three agents that are on track to hit 30 But I got tons of agents who are like picking up maybe one listing a week, not on track to do 30, but picking up real good inventory from doing the challenge. But I'm telling people with the handwritten letters, do a thousand of them, you know, find 20 expires, you know, maybe two year old, three year old, four year old that are considering to relist and for sale by owners, call every sell by owner in your in your market. But also do a video every day, right? for Instagram mainly, but put it on Facebook and everything else because when you do one every day,

it piles up the views and you're able to impress your seller with how many impressions you're getting on social media. And that helps you stand out amongst the other agents that might be trying to list that property. You know, hey, I'm getting 100,000 views a month on my platform, on my socials, and I'm going to be pushing your property out on those platforms, right? That means something to these sellers in today's world. So yeah, I've got about a thousand agents who run the challenge. And it's exciting seeing everything, all the agents, you know, participating.

And, you know, we do day, everybody's poster daily updates every day in the Facebook group and stuff. So yeah, it's been exciting because right now, bro, if you go out and get, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 listings between now and the end of the year, you're going to you're going to crush 2020 24 is like literally crushed at that point. Right. So people can still get started with this, right? Because I put the link up for your YouTube, your extensive YouTube broadcast you did. It's about two and a half, two, three hours. So I put that up there.

And they can also get it through your text as well. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay. So as we move along, we get this gone. This is something really that that's extremely cool. And I saw it. And I've watched the video and I may even get involved as well, 30 listing challenge.

Ricky, talk to me about is this the way that people should get started in their business? Is this the way? Is this the one that you would tell people to do? Brand new agents, you can go get 30 listings right now. You know, experienced agents, you know, go get 30 lists. Like right now being the down moment of the 10-year. housing market and the yearly housing market. Right now, you actually have time to go get 30 listings, right?

Because next year is going to be busy. Even if rates stay at 8%, whatever happens, next year is going to be busy. You know, if rates go to 12, if rates get higher into the nines and tens and 11s, we'll see what happens. But listen, in that moment that rates get into double digits, that's a point where you could see some price drops. You could see some prices come down, which if you ask any agent, you say,

hey, how many buyers are you working with? Are you working with a ton of buyers who are waiting on prices to come down? What are they going to say? They're going to say, why? No, no, no. If you say, hey, are you working with a bunch of buyers who are waiting on prices to come down? Yes.

They're going to say, I'm working. I've got like 100 of them that are waiting on prices to come down, right? So if we get into a 10% rate, prices drop. How busy do you think we're going to be? Because here's the thing. If you get to a 10 or 11 or something like that, there's still going to be buy downs. You're still going to be able to buy rates down. Sellers are going to have to come off the price so that, you know, to sell properties.

I mean, it's just going to happen. And you're going to be extremely busy in that environment. Yeah, it's really important for you to be on top of everything that's going on because it, I think when it starts changing and the environment changes, it's going to happen fast. If you said it before, the market's going to bounce up and bounce back violently. And that is so true. That is so true. We had a question before.

I just want to hit this. I didn't want to ignore the questions. Talk about letters. You talked about 10 from letters, handwritten notes, 10 from FISBOs, 10 from expires. We had pop up before someone asking about, talk about letters using that to prospect with. Okay. Yeah. I mean, there's a text number at the bottom of the screen.

Okay. Text the number, 251, 3, 1,2, 8, 844. Put your contact information in. I'll send you a link to the 30 listing challenge where I just in detail, train about the entire thing. It's a letter that I handwrite the envelope, I handwrite the letter. It's one question. And I've made millions off of this letter.

And agents, if you go to the zero to diamond real estate agent Facebook group and scroll through there. You'll just see post after post after post of people doing these letters, talking about getting listings and everything else. Awesome. So yeah, just dive into the content. Ricky, I really want to thank you for coming on today and extending the time. I sincerely appreciate it. I've been doing this a long time and I've been lucky to have you on twice now. And it's an honor for me. What can I do, day finale do to help you grow your business? Oh, man. Listen, And my business right now is just building the Ricky Caruth brand. You know, so just having me on the show and exposing me to more people that

my content can possibly help is plenty, bro. Great. I'm so excited with that. And as you know, I mean, you heard there was a new hat. So you said, you know what? Let me go help Dave out and I'll get a new hat for it. So we only have top notch people on no matter who they are. And I want to again, Ricky, thank you so much for coming on.

And I look forward to one second. I want to put that back up. Where to go? Where to go? There it is. I want to thank you. Just hold on for a second as we go out next week. Germeski.

Thanks so much, everybody. We'll see you next week. And hit the videotape. Now, you know,