KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Stop Trying to Sell Your Listings.

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

You only have to get it to a certain point. It's not like you have to do this for the rest of your life. I got up to where I was making a million bucks a year, and that was the year I never made another cold call again in my life, but I continued to make a million every year. Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for Ricky! He is an investor, a speaker, and soon to be remembered, in my opinion, as a legend in the industry.

The cool thing about what he was doing was he was documenting everything. Like he would post his calls, his work he was putting in, strategies. He was sharing everything. Most of these people are only talking to one agent, and they're doing the business with them. My job is to sell the listing, and I said, why do you feel like that's your job, right? Everybody, hold on and stop shopping. Sir, you would? Great.

Come right over here. Let me get your information. Man, you're a taker. Come on over here. Let me get your information. Like, this is before it's happening. This is the moment right here. I want you to understand that no one can ever take your skills away from you.

Once I crushed real estate, I was like, okay, let me crush social media and understand this game is you do not want to sell real estate forever, I promise you. And our next speaker, he is a legend and a visionary. And we're very, very honored to have him. I watch a bunch of his videos on YouTube, on Instagram. Actually, every day when I wake up, I see his video. So it gets me pumped up. And he has sold over a thousand homes himself as a solo agent in Alabama and flipped over a hundred homes in his career.

And super knowledgeable, I met him at our EXP conference and chat with him privately, saw him speak on stage, and we're just very fortunate to have him share the stage with us and to share his wisdom. So without further ado, that's welcome Ricky Carew. you guys hey good to be here good to see all of you

number one Ron dude that was amazing bro I don't know you but that was that was really good and it kind of helped me kind of understand where I wanted to take this talk today because I have really no idea where

we were going to go with it but he really gave you some nuts and bolts there when it comes to organizing your Lino Lee Jen your follow-up And that was very specific. I really love that. So I'm going to play directly off of what he just told you

to try to maybe fill in the blanks a little bit around some of his stuff. And hopefully between, and I didn't see the other speakers or whoever, you know, Sean's going to be after me. But hopefully this will kind of help you kind of put it all together. I think that, number one, we need to be thinking a lot about how we're communicating with our clients. Okay, we're really trained to close the deal. And I love what Ron said with, you know, don't ask them, you know, if they're prequalified and stuff like this. What I want you to think about, okay, I want to talk about communication.

I want to talk about a little bit of follow up and maybe help you simplify that process, as well as like where this can lead to in terms of your career towards a more residual type business. Because a lot of people think buying leads, cold calls, door knocking all that stuff, and they're looking at it so singular, right, so, so, you know, shallow that they're not, they're not realizing that if you do this enough to build your database to the point that you're making the amount of money you want to make, you don't have to do that anymore. Like, if you really crush the cold calls, the lead, the online leads, the social media, whatever it is you do that you do, that you do to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to. build your business and grow your database, you only have to get it to a certain point.

It's not like you have to do this for the rest of your life. I want you to understand that. The problem is most of us don't like that part, so we don't do it as much as we should, and it drags out for the rest of our life. But if I can get you to understand how if you go all in and give it three to five hard years, you'll get to a place where you don't have to worry about leads, deals, Ever again, I got up to where I was making a million bucks a year, and that was the year I never made another cold call again in my life. But I continued to make a million every year.

Because I experienced what I'm telling you. So I kind of want to touch on that as well. One thing I found interesting in some recent statistics, which I don't know what to believe, honestly, with statistics anymore. I feel like I'm being manipulated from a lot of the things that I've read here lately. But I'm going to go with this because I feel like. like it's more than likely true. 71% of buyers they went with the very

first agent that they talked to. 71%. The study also showed 81% of sellers went with the very first agent that they talked to. I think that could play into this lawsuit and stuff, how

sellers are unhappy about things. It doesn't even seem like they're getting a second opinion. Where does the responsibility lie on them? But I don't want to point fingers. I want to be the one that says, okay, here's a problem. Let me help you, Mr. Sellers. Since I realize since I'm in the business, you probably only talk to one agent. Let me help clarify and help you understand all of your options. Totally different conversation. What I'm getting at is that most of these people are only talking to one agent and they're doing

the business with them. I want you to understand that. I want you to put yourself in the position to talk to more people than anyone. Do you know that being a real estate agent is predicated on you talking to people that you do and don't know to help them buy real estate? Okay. That is the premise of your job. But you know what your job really is? We were on a, we were on a Zoom call. I was on a Zoom call just before this.

And the agent said, I have this overpriced listing, right? and I'm kind of frustrated because my job is to sell the listing and I said, why do you feel like that's your job? That's not your job. Your job is not to sell the, and I said, this is where we're getting confused as an industry, as agents. That's not our job. Our job is to help the seller or the buyer, whoever we're representing, do whatever

it is they're trying to do, right? They may not care if it's said. They may be okay with it being overpriced and not selling. Now our job isn't selling the listing. It's making sure it's on the market. If it sells, it sells because that's what the seller wants. So we got to understand what our job is. Our job is to talk to more people than anyone else in our market.

If you want to be the number one agent, you just got to talk to the most people. If you do that through social media, online leads, door not fucking cold calls, direct mail. I don't care how you do it. You can go to Walmart and say, hey, everybody, a tick, tension, right? Everybody, hold on and stop. shopping. I have an announcement to make here. I'm a real estate agent here locally. My name's Ricky. How are you guys doing? You know, get them all to applaud and stuff and be like, let me ask you guys a question. Like, does anyone here, would you guys be interested in a rental property with

some really good cash flow if I had one? Sir, you would? Great. Come right over here. Let me get your information. Man, you're a taker. Come on over here. Let me get your information. Like, I don't care how you do it, but you got to do it. You can't sit and hide behind a desk or hide and make excuses, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, working on my website, I'm getting my business cards just right, and I'm writing some letters. Fuck that. We got to go, man.

And right now, with the market being down, this is as slow as it's going to get. We're at the down moment of the 10-year market that crashes every 10 years, right? It's been like 15 this time. And we're at the down moment of the yearly cycle. In the fall, prices soften, days of the market. and days of the market go up, listings go up,

all that. Everything that's happening right now happens every year. It's a little more extreme because of interest rates and this, that and the other. But the fact is, is that this is the down moment of both the 10-year cycle and the yearly cycle. Do you realize the opportunity right now to expand your business? Because have you guys heard of a reverse crash? The housing market is going to explode. How many of you have a buy? buyer or how many of you have 10 buyers or more who say who want to buy who are waiting on

prices to come to help okay how many of you have sellers who are dying to have a bigger house but they can't because they're locked into lower rates okay that is pent up demand it's massive and rates rates have come down like 60 basis points in the last week okay the they're going to go back up. They're going to go back up. They're going to fluctuate. They may even go back up to eight before they come down for real, for real. Who knows in the short term, but we know long term over the next 12, you know, 6, 12, 8, 10, 24 months.

Like, we're going to get some relief. And bro, the longer it takes for rates to come down, the, the more massive that this wave of pent up demand is going to be released. I want you to be in a position right now is the moment right now, not when the way, when you think is the best time to take advantage of a massive market swing. While it's happening or before it's happening. Before it's happening. Okay. What part of the cycle are we in right now? Three happening.

This is before it's happening. This is the moment right here that you have to be the one talking to the most people. Okay. So let's talk about communication. When you talk to a prospect, here's my rule of thumb. When I'm talking to a prospect, what are the questions I would ask this prospect if they were my mother, if they were my father, if they were Sean Cacosta, if they were my best friend from high school? How would I talk to them? Because that's what I'm, that's what I, that's what I. That is how I want to talk to my prospects. I want to treat them like they're my mom, dad, brother, cousin, best friend from high school. That's how I talk to my prospects. How are you doing? As in, I really want to know.

See, some sales guys will say, don't ask how you're doing because everybody knows you don't care. And you can tell me you really care, but I know you really don't. Well, that's just a totally different philosophy for me. They're in a whole different planet, right? Because you've got to understand that every person you talk to, you're literally not talking to one person about one deal. You may call an expired, and that expired, you may be thinking listing. I'm not.

I'm thinking maybe they want to buy, maybe they want to do this or that. But at the end of the day, that relationship with that person, regardless if they buy herself today or not, is worth 10 to 20 deals to me. me over the life of my career, over the next 12 years, 15 years, whatever. And the more of those I can stack up, then the closer I can get to knocking down a thousand deals over the next decade, let's say, is a single agent, or a thousand deals a year if you're a team, however you want to slice it up. But it's all going to come down to the people that know you, that love

you, that want to do business with it. 43%, which was the largest percentage, by the way, of buyers and sellers picked their agent through a referral. It wasn't online. 14% did it online. They picked their agent online. 14%. 43, it was through a referral

from a friend or family. Okay? And what sad is it was only like 12 or something like that that was repeat business that went back to the agent they used before. Most everybody wants to get that referral

from someone that they trust. The whole game is how do I make everybody feel like we're family? And how do I scale that? So I hope that kind of helps you. I only have 20 minutes here to kind of like try to flip your mind a little bit. But hopefully that kind of helps you at least a little bit. I'm happy to answer questions and stuff. The next thing is can we simplify this entire follow-up in terms of building

brand. Okay, let's simplify it. For me, and I learned this back in 2007 when I started doing it, if I did a weekly email on the same day of the week forever, that's it, dude. Like, nobody ever forgets who I am. I get a 90% organic reach. I get to tell people my opinions on stuff. Anybody that's doing generic content, you have a company doing the email for you or doing your content for you. With all due respect, you suck right now. And that, it's as in, you don't suck. You just suck right now. If you aren't giving your opinions on what's happening in the market, what you think about the new restaurant, what you think about the new development coming in, what you think about prices, if you're not giving your opinions on stuff, people are going to

tune out of you. And they're going to be watching, they're going to spend that attention on people who are giving their opinions on things. You're going to lose to the agent that's actually putting in the work to actually create content around who they are and their opinions on what's happening in the local market. That's another thing. People are sending out stuff on national statistics. Nobody cares about that. The numbers are so skew.

They want to know local stuff. Right? So let's just back up for a second. I'm like screaming and going a bunch of different directions, right? Let's bring it all together here. Communicating, okay? You got to talk to the only thing between you and a million bucks a year, I can promise you. It's just thousands of one-on-one conversations with people in your market.

Digitally or face-to-face or over the phone, it's thousands of one-on-one conversations developing those relationships with people in your market. You can spread that out over the course of 100 years or you can do it in three to five years. me I wanted to get it done now so I just got it done immediately I realized that all the marketing and money spent on direct mail and open houses and and all that brought me back and buying leads all that brought me back to the same exact place which was having a conversation with someone in my market so when I realized that I was like I can I can bypass all the time money and energy I'm spending trying to market to try to have conversations.

I could just go straight to the conversations because I can get people's information for a penny, pick out which properties I want to sell, call the owners, and create lifelong relationships forever. Not everybody's built like that and I understand. But you got to figure out what your thing is to have thousands of one-on-one conversations with people in your market yesterday. Do 10 a day, 20 a day. But you got to get there if you want to get to the mill.

It's got to be about volume at some point. How much time do I have? You don't have seven minutes or so. At some point, ladies and gentlemen, your business has to be about volume of people that know who you are if you want to scale. A lot of us chalk up a lot of time spent giving great customer service and you're using that as a crutch and an excuse

not to go after the masses. And you know it. you're using it as an excuse. I'm giving great customer service. I'm spending all this time and doing all this stuff. When you could have spent one-tenth of the time with that person, gave them the same warm and fuzzies that you're giving them now, and spent that same time across 10 people,

giving them all 10 the same warm and fuzzies you gave the one person. You have to learn how to multiply your time across a lot of people. This is a skill. In terms of skills and like future of industry and lawsuits and technology and blockchain and AI and all of the things out there, I want you to understand that no one can ever take your skills away from you. meaning that if you go out here and really grind, learn this business, crush it, develop incredible skills in terms of building business, sales skills, marketing, finance, the whole nine yards, no one can ever take that away from you. If you crush it in real estate, this is the hardest industry to get into, period.

It's the lowest barrier of entry, but 90% of people fail. It is the hardest industry. If you can crush it in real estate, you can go do any industry you want to do. I promise you. Right? You can go. And once you do crush it, that's what you will do. You'll go do whatever you want to do because you'll have that superpower.

That's what I did. Once I crushed real estate, I was like, okay, let me crush social media and understand this game. And you see what I did. It just took the same thing I did in real estate and applied it over here. and that's what each and every one of you are going to do. Another thing you need to think about, because I'm just trying to jam as much value as I can into this, is you do not want to sell real estate forever, I promise you.

You may say you do, but you don't know that you don't yet. Okay, it'll come to you. And what I want you to realize is that you need to start buying rental properties now. Your goal should be buying one rental property a year, two rental properties a year, three rental properties a year, one every other year, whatever. It should be a goal of yours that you're always saving up for another rental property and build that portfolio start now so that in 10 years when you're burned out for real estate, you can continue selling, but not because you want, not because you need to,

or have to, because you want to for a little while longer, and then you can step out completely. It's the end game. Not everybody can become a social media superstar and build businesses online, okay? But everybody can go out and buy rental properties and build a portfolio and right off into the sunset over the next decade. And it's something everybody needs to think about because most agents only see that horizon of being the number one agent, but they don't see past that. Make a million bucks a year as an agent, earned income as an agent. They don't see past that.

And I want to open up your mind a little bit to seeing past that a little bit. Okay, so continuing to recap. One last thing. I want to make it really, really clear on this communication part is that stop thinking transactions like the agent that I was on the Zoom with who said his job was to sell the listing. No, it's not. Your job is to help the client do whatever it is they're trying to do. And that's not always to do the deal. So I want you to be more open-minded when you're talking to your clients and realize this is a lifelong relationship that I'm trying to build here to not only do this deal with them whenever they decide it's time to go forward, but to do the 30 deals behind it through repeat and referral business.

Because remember, 43% of people picked their agent through referrals. That's massive. 71% of buyers and 81% of sellers went with the first agent they talked to. They didn't interview three agents. So you got to be, A, a great relationship builder, and B, first to market. You need to be the very first agent

that buyers and sellers are talking to because chances are 71% buyers and 81% sellers, you're going to be the agent that they pick. But you can't do that if you're hiding behind your computer or chalking it up to whatever it is you guys do all day. Okay. I'm, I can't breathe anymore. Hi, my name is Lance.

Nice with you, Ricky. So what is the good market to buy rental right now? Good market, the market that you live in more than likely. I buy rentals right here where I live. I just bought five new constructions and an existing. I've got about 40 doors, but I just, I'm closing on three acres at the end of the year to build 46-unit apartment complex.

It's all like a couple miles from my house. Yeah, I see not Southern Cali. There's definitely markets where it's not cash flowing because of prices and stuff like that. I'm in Alabama, so I guess it's easy for me to say. So pick some, pick, That's a good question, right? I'd have to do some research and say, okay, like out of the country,

where's the lower end towns and cities that are up and coming, right? That have a low cost of living and, you know, but have a lot of new construction. People are moving there because of jobs and stuff. I'd have to do some research to answer that. Hey, come invest in Gulf Shores. like it's it's fire all right thank you have an agent there I know an agent there he's pretty good one too I didn't go to throw in at Ricky's right in hindsight I would

have done it maybe a little bit differently we have to file tax returns in seven different states because of the different rental properties they'll be owned it's really problematic to manage properties long distance unless you have a great your relationship with property management company. Yeah, it's challenging to say the least. And it's hard to go to seventh level with that

because you always get sucked back into it, don't you, Ricky? Yeah. Yeah. Cool, man. You guys got like one more maybe like real estate agent

business type question. Yeah. One second. One second. Hey, Ricky. For your weekly emails, how do you come up with topics or do you

do you do it all in a month and you just create it or you do it every week. So I actually simplify this really, really well. So people have been liking it because it made it pretty simple as far as coming up with weekly content. But I'll give you a tip though, a hot tip. People love new listings. Like if you just have the new listings on there every week, like here's the new listings.

I have new listings every single week on there. There's a link to it. People love watching the new listings. listings, watching the closings as they happen. You know, that gives you evergreen, like, forever content within that as far as the market goes. And then you just add one little thing. A lot of you're doing too much in your email.

Just do one subject because people literally look at sales emails for one second. If they can't click and go like this and see what they need to see and get out of there, then you're going to lose. They're not going to open your email ever again. If they have to go like this or put on glasses or repairagraphs, they're out. So just go there, follow my little thing. If you don't use the template system, just look at my emails I'm doing and just copy what I'm doing.

And you use constant contact to do that? Yeah. Great. Thank you. Hey, enjoy it guys. Sean, I go to see you, bro. Let's catch up. Ricky, great to see you, brother.

I could listen to you all day long. I was just like, I was going to tell Jack, just, I'll give up my time. Let me let us have a second. All right. Well, thank you so much, Ricky. That was so much goal there.