Why Becoming A Real Estate Agent Is An AWFUL Idea

All right, guys. Today, I'm going to keep it real with you. I'm going to talk to you about something that's near and dear to my heart because I went through it. And there are literally agents out here suffering. Nobody's going to talk about this. What it's actually like to make a million dollars a year as an agent. And the question I want to help you answer is this. Is becoming a top-producing agent really worth it? And by the end of this video, if you say, "Yep. Absolutely, Ricky. I'm willing to do whatever it takes." Which is how I was, by the way. "I'm willing to do anything to build a million-dollar business. I don't care about all the stuff you just talked about." Then I'm going to give you the exact blueprint. I'm going to give you the million-dollar formula. But before we get into all of that, just listen to what my friend Ryan Serhant says about his own life as a real estate agent. >> I don't see my family. I work 7 days a week. I'm focused on growth already. I'm keeping everything afloat. I'm moving as fast as I can. The snowball's just getting bigger. It'd be hard for me to even stop it if I wanted to. >> Now, I don't know how many of you watching have built a seven-figure business as an agent, but I can attest everything that he just said is exactly what it's like to build a million-dollar per year business as an agent. You can hear, literally, the pain in his voice. It's the same pain I've heard from agents all over the country. And everything Ryan just said is exactly why I completely walked away from my million-dollar per year business as an agent. this video, let's talk about it, man. What it's actually like, what it's really like, what nobody warned you about. The exact strategy. I want to give you the exact strategy that you should have as an agent to build wealth while you're an agent so you can get out of the business as quickly as possible so that you, at that point, can go do the thing you actually want to do with your life. You can go live your dream, which is what you envisioned when you got your license in the first place. Now, I want to kick this off with a question. For those of you watching, how many of you want to sell real estate until the day that you die? I travel, I speak to agents, I've been on 18 stages so far this year, and I ask this just about every time, and I'll have about one or two agents raise their hand out of a thousand agents saying that they want to sell real estate until the day they die. And I said, "So, let me get this straight. 99.9% of you spent time, money, and energy to come here today to learn how to do something that you don't actually want to do with your life?" And for sure, not all 99% of those agents are top producers yet. So, they're not even top producers yet, and they're already thinking, "This isn't what I want to do with my life forever. This is just a financial stepping stone to get to the thing that I actually want to do with my life." So, my question is, why is there even an ounce of hesitation in you whatsoever? Why are you not going all in to give this everything you got so you can succeed as fast as possible, make the millions, and then go do the thing that you actually want to do with your life? Okay, let me show you what this actually looks like on a chart so you can start to think ahead. So, these are the different income levels, 200,000 a year, 400, 600, 800, and a million dollars per year, right? And this red dot here and this red line I'm about to draw is your quality of life. So, when you get in the business, right, as you make more money, you naturally believe that your quality of life is going to skyrocket the more money you make, the higher quality life you have. But, what happens in reality, and what happened for me, and what I see happening across the board with agents all over the place, is that their actual quality of life peaks out somewhere around 300-ish thousand, and then once they cross that milestone, and they get to 400, 600, 800, a million, their quality of life kind of starts to dwindle, right? And their quality of life at a million bucks, by the time they get to the million bucks, they're literally suffering. And you might be asking like, why? Why are people suffering making a million bucks? That sounds very counterintuitive. That sounds very opposite of what you would believe to be the case. The reality of it is is that you're making a million dollars per year. On paper it looks great. You have this awesome business. You're popping on social. You're like a local celebrity. Everybody knows you. Like everything feels good. You're selling a lot of properties, but you've trapped yourself. And it happens gradually. You don't even realize it's happening until you get there and you're like, oh my gosh. I cannot even get out of here if I wanted to. You're on call 24 hours a day like a doctor. Random calls constantly dragging you all over the county across multitude of different tasks. You can't take a vacation without your phone like literally blowing up. Like that's Everybody says like, if you want to sell some real estate, just go on vacation. Your phone will literally explode with so much business coming in. Right? And at that level of production, everybody wants you all at once. The stress, the burnout, you literally cannot take a break. You're basically miserable. And literally suffering. And until you're there, you do not understand the level of burnout. So, when I got there, right? When I got there, I rode it till the wheels fell off. I saw the writing on the wall. The first year I made a million bucks a year. I was like, oh my goodness. Because when it clicked over from December 31st to January 1st, 2018, that second year I made a million bucks, that that second year when I hit January 1st, I was like, oh my gosh. I'm at zero for the year. I don't know if I can go through that again. I don't know if I can climb that million dollar mountain again because that was wild. That was wild stuff. So, I saw the writing on the wall and I said, you know what? I'm going to squeeze this for every last drop. I'm going to squeeze it for every last drop. And that's what I did. By 2022 when I retired, I remember I had million dollar clients calling me. And I saw the number on my caller ID and I was literally cringing. Not wanting to answer the phone. Now, what you got to understand about me is that I sold 100 properties a year for eight years in a row as a single agent. All right, I was the number one agent in my entire MLS that entire time. So, I literally went as hard in the paint as I could possibly go for as long as possible until the wheels literally fell off. And when you reach that level, I'm telling you right now, when you reach that level, you are done. I remember Joshua Smith, he he's a he's a great coach. And I looked up to him. He was a coach before I became a coach and I was like, this is the guy I want to be like. I want to model I want to model after him. And we were at an event one time speaking and I was still selling 100 properties a year. And I was still loving it. And he was like, how long you going to do this, man? Like single agent selling 100 properties a year. I was like, dude, I'm going to do it forever. And you think you are. You think you are. And he said, you're going to love it till you don't. And I'm going to tell you right now, he was so right because that moment that I didn't, I was completely done and I handed my business my entire business. I was like, Dad, my dad still sells. And I said, Dad, look, you can have it. Like here's the keys. I threw the whole business at him and I didn't take one single dollar. I don't make any money off of any of the commissions that he does. I didn't at the time. I still don't now. That's how burned out I was. I said, I don't want I don't want to hear about a listing. I don't want to hear about a client. I don't want to hear nothing about it. I'm going to go out here. I've got this other business. I'm going to build this other business. And so, I'll take it a step further. When I became a coach a couple of years ago after I'd been coaching for a while, I said to myself, you know what? I'm going to create a a new product, a new program for million dollar and up agents who want to get out of being an agent and start coaching agents like I do, who want to build a coaching business, right? And so I created an application process, I put it out there, and I was stunned because I was literally flooded with applicants. Agents making a million bucks or more per year who were literally suffering, miserable. I had phone conversations with every single one of them cuz I really wanted to fill them out and see if it's something they wanted to do, etc. And it was amazing the feedback that I got. It was like an overwhelming demand of agents that are at that place and just don't know how to get out. They're literally trapped. And so I already know there's a lot of agents that are going to watch this and they're not at the million-dollar mark yet and they're saying to themselves like that's not true. It's not going to be like that for me or I'll go out and just build a team or they've got the answers, right? They got all the answers. And the ones that are making a million bucks or more, I bet you anything I'm going to see some comments down there from some of those guys saying he's right. But let's just address the team the team thing for a second, guys. I'm only going to say a few things about building a team, right? And the first thing is being a team leader is a full-time job and the mistake most agents make is they're still in the building phase of their the their business trying to build momentum and get sales and build revenue and then they start trying to build a team in the middle of their building phase, right? And being a team leader is a full-time job, being a real estate agent building your business is a full-time job, and now you have two full-time jobs. So even if you're successful as a team leader, which most people are not, you go out there and this full-time job cannibalizes the other full-time job and everything is super chaotic, right? Expenses go to the moon, profit margins drop like a rock, and you're like, why in the world did I do this? And I tried the team thing a couple of times, but for the reasons I just said is why I stayed a single agent throughout my career. Profit margins, number one, right? I realized that it's two full-time jobs and I should just focus on the job that's going to pay me the most money. That's all that mattered to me at the end of the day, how much money I'm making. So, I'm making a million bucks at 80% margins. The team leaders in our my market were making a million bucks with 20% margins and we were both working just as hard. So, after hearing all of this, if you're still like, "Ricky, I want to do this. I want to go build a million-dollar business. I want to ride it till the wheels fall off. I want to squeeze it for every last drop that I can." Then, I salute you because that's exactly what you should do. That's exactly what I would tell you to do, right? I'm going to tell you, go out there and make 10 million bucks as an agent and then ride off into the sunset. Give it everything you got to crush it as hard as you can so that you can go live the life that you want to live. If you don't do it as a real estate agent, where else are you going to go build a business, make that kind of money, and go live the life you want to live? I don't care where you go, it's going to be just as hard. So, here's what I want you to know. Number one, right now is the greatest opportunity agents will ever see in your entire career. The market rebound that is coming, it is coming. We don't know when it's coming, but when it hits, it's going to be like an atomic bomb and everything that you built while the market was down is going to come tenfold when the market rebounds. I'm speaking from experience. And what's so crazy about the market right now is that even though it's down, real estate commissions, the real estate commission pool, the amount of money that agents are making as an industry in the US is higher per year than it's ever been in history pre-pandemic. Agents are making more money right now than ever before, but only the top 10%. So, if agents are making more money right now, when the market is down, what do you think's going to happen when the market rebounds? So, here's what I want for you. I want you to become a top 10% agent. I want to have your sights set on being in that top 10%. Look at the amount of agents in your MLS, figure out what the top 10% number is, and say to yourself, "That's where I got to be over the next couple of years to really maximize where I'm going in this career." So, let me give you four easy steps to reach that top 10%. Number one, go all in. You have to have such a level of focus that people are going to think you're absolutely insane. Let me tell you how focused I was on getting to the million bucks. I zoned out everything that didn't involve whatever my role was in the transaction. My role was connecting buyers and sellers, negotiating deals, and getting ratified contracts. That's the only thing I focused on. When clients would ask me what the current 30-year fixed mortgage was, or where mortgage rates were, I had no clue. That's the level of focus that I had. I did not know what mortgage rates were, I did not know where the stock market was at any given time. I was not on social media, scrolling through social media. I wasn't looking at the news headlines. I was focused on one thing, how can I talk to more people? How can I How can I get to more people? The exact people that I want to do business with. Now Now, mind you, in today's world, you have to be on social media. You have to be on social media. The business has evolved so much. The things that I've done in the past, like 90% of that stuff, you can throw it in the garbage. I I don't even coach cold calling anymore. I actually tell agents, "Do not cold call." Why? It's not a great ROE anymore. Pick up rates have dropped dramatically, right? It's not a great return on effort. You can sit there for 3 hours now and talk to two people. I'm not going to teach agents how to do that. There are far better ways. So, you have to evolve of business, but the number one thing The number one thing I want you to focus on is to go all in and be like, "I'm going to make this work." That's the first thing you have to do. Right? Step number two is copy someone's business model. Find an agent that will teach you their business model. Find a coach that has a proven business model and literally copy it to a T for a while. Right? Copy it to a T and then eventually start optimizing it for you and what your strengths and weaknesses are, what you want your life, what you want your business to look like. But start with somebody else's business model and then quickly start evolving it into your own business model. And the third step, I want you to take all that focus you have on your real estate business and the business model that you've created for yourself and I want you to build it so big, so fast that you have all this excess cash to then invest into stocks and real estate. And anyone can do this. Right? Not everybody can do what I did and build a personal brand and start coaching agents. That's like one in a million. But anyone, everyone, you can go out there and create a stock portfolio, create a real estate portfolio, diversify all of your stuff in a way that will pay you for the rest of your life. The quicker you can build this portfolio, the quicker you can leave the business and go do the thing you actually want to do with your life. What is that by the way? What do you want to do with your life? Is it write books? Is it do mission trips? Is it charity work? Right? Is it Is it running and doing a lot lot of fishing? Is it hanging out with the family? Like what do you love to do? What is it that if you didn't have to do anything else, if you're completely financially free, what is it that you would do every single day? That's what I want you to do at that point. Why are you not going as hard as you can to make the money so you can go do that as quickly as possible? Which brings me to step four, live the dream. Once you've built this, you've went as hard as you can, now you can actually go live the dream and do the thing you actually want to do and maybe you want to start another business. But here's the mistake agents make. Again, like building a team, they want to try to start that business when they're in the building phase of the business. When you're in the building phase of the business, trying to get to the income level that you dream of, focus only on being a real estate agent. Once you get there to the million bucks, a half a million, two million, whatever it is, once you get there and you're in the maintaining phase of the business, where you're hitting that every year because you're past clients and referrals and referrals of referrals, now we can go do that second vertical business, whatever that passion is, now we can take that time and go do that. So if you watched this entire video and thought I still want to do this, then watch this next video where I break down the million dollar formula. I will show you exactly how to do it step by step.