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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast!
Dave Charest: Today on episode 18 of the Be a Marketer podcast, you'll hear from a real estate agent who, thanks to email marketing, closes 100 deals a year without prospecting. He's also the world's first completely free real estate coach. And I'm sharing why constant contact is more than just a name. This is the Be a Marketer podcast. Be a marketer my name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact, and I've been helping small business owners like you make sense of online marketing for over 16 years. You can be a marketer, and I'm here to help. Well, hello, friend, and welcome to another edition of the Be a Marketer podcast. You know, today I wanted to highlight one consistent thing that I've been hearing in these conversations that I've been having with successful business owners and marketers. And that one thing is consistency. Now, you're going to hear more about it in today's conversation, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it here because you're going to hear more about it in future episodes as well. But I did want to mention that it is also one of the things that I've observed personally over my 16 years in marketing. Consistency, if you think about it, really breeds trust and exudes reliability. And when it comes to marketing, you may not always notice immediate results. And so oftentimes it's best to think long term. For example, if you're just getting started, I'd like you to think in terms of twelve to 18 months before you start to notice a real shift. Now, the results, they will start to come if you choose that frequency that you can commit to and then stick to it. And it's through this constant contact that you stay top of mind with the people you're trying to reach. And when they're ready, they come to you. You know, I guess thinking about it, there really is something to that name. Constant contact. Well, friend, today's guest is a top real estate agent in Alabama. Ricky Carruth started his career in 2002. He's made it, lost it, came back and crushed it. Through it all, Ricky has emerged as the number one agent on the Gulf coast since 2014. He's the world's first completely free real estate coach and a constant contact partner. Let's go to Ricky to hear his story. Id like to just start with just getting a little background on you. What can you tell me about your business, Steven?
Ricky Carruth: Oh, man. Dude, that is a really tangled web. Thats a really tangled web. Preston. I guess primarily im a real estate agent. Ive done that for 21 years. I started in zero two and I was just a real estate agent for 15 years. Just solid. I had to get out of the business when the market crashed and went back to roofing houses, worked on an oil rig, all that stuff, and came back and eventually climbed up to be in one of the top agents in the country. I was the number one agent in a remax agent in Alabama for a long time. Number one in my market for eight years in a row. And just found a lot of success with selling. Im right in Gulf Shores, Alabama, which is right on the Florida Alabama line and its right on the beach. So you think Florida beach is. Well, that extends into Alabama a good 40 miles. People don't realize that. So we have really beautiful beaches. And I sell Gulf front, you know, beachfront properties, you know, in the white sands. So it's really cool and it's a small town. Gulf Shores is 15,000 population. Orange beach is like 25,000, something like that. So it's a really small town that's grown a lot, but we have like seven 8 million visitors every year that come down to the coast. So also have my Florida license, you know, and I, you know, sell a lot of stuff right across the line as well. And then when I made it in my mid twenties, lost it, came back and then really crushed it and became one of the top out there. I was like, man, I got to share this with people. So I wrote a couple books and started speaking, writing and coaching. I became the world's first completely free real estate coach for agents and everything just kind of took off, started creating content and building my brand and helping people and the mission statements to help reduce the failure rate in the real estate industry one agent at a time. And so coming full circle back to present day last year, I took a step out of production where my dad handles the day to day on the sales side. And I'm more full time. I'm traveling three times a month to speak to not just real estate agents, I'm speaking to real estate investors, entrepreneurs, social media people that want to start doing social. I'm starting to collaborate with some really big names, which is exciting. So a lot of cool things are happening. But at the end of the day, I'm just a hard worker. I grew up roofing houses with my dad when I was a teenager and that's kind of where it all started. So I just like to work, you know, so I'm just a grinder, you know, I post four to six times a day on Instagram every day. I do a YouTube, couple YouTube videos a day. I'm just really out here doing what I can do to try to crush it.
Dave Charest: Yeah. So I'm curious. I want to kind of talk about this journey a little bit. So how did you get into real estate in the first place?
Ricky Carruth: Well, it's either go to school for ten years and be a doctor or lawyer, or take one class, get your real estate license and really have the same opportunities, Sky's the limit type mentality towards your career and income. So I kind of regard agents, real estate agents up there with doctors and lawyers myself, as far as an occupation goes in terms of what they do for the community and what their income potential is. And so Im super efficient. Whenever I see something that literally is a hack on a life hack towards getting to the next level the quickest, then Im going to do that immediately. Right. So the real estate license being basically one class and then a state test, that process forgoing ten years of college to me was a no brainer. I went to college, I went to four different schools in two years. I failed a history class at University of Alabama and thats when I decided college wasnt for me. Its not that I didnt try college or want to do college. When I got to college, I didnt know what I was going to study, so I studied business. I didnt know what I was going to major in. Even when I quit, I still had no idea what direction I was going to go in. So I was just lost when I went to college. And then I took the pre licensed class at university. It was actually Shelton State in Tuscaloosa. Then when I took the class, I didn't know if I was ever going to do real estate because basically in the class, like I thought you get your license and then it's kind of like on your driver's license or something, a little stamp where everybody knows, right? Yeah. You can sell real estate the rest of your life. You're good. You know, I didn't know before I took the class that, okay, once you pass the class, you got a year to take the test, then you got 90 days to find a broker, then you got 180 days to take the post license course, then you got continuing ed every other year. Then you have all these fees and all this stuff. And I was like, man, this is too much commitment right now. I don't even know if I want to do this, you know, but I came home from passing that pre license and it was like, got back on the roof for four days with dad, and I was like, I think I'm going to do real estate.
Dave Charest: I don't want to do this.
Ricky Carruth: Yeah. So it's just something I kind of fell into. And one of my homeroom teachers in middle school's husband is a big time agent around here, so I started with him and just learned the ropes. And it's an interesting business, man. It really is. So now I'm on the other side, where I'm teaching brand new agents how to crush it, and I'm seeing it from this perspective. You know, back then, it took me eight months to make my first sale, and on average, right now, it's still the same. You know, on average, it takes agents who are going to succeed six months to get to their first sale. I'll say who are going to succeed, because 90% of agents don't make it. So the 10% who do, right. Only 10% that get their license are actually going to succeed to the level they can actually do this and make a living. And out of those 10%, it takes agents six months to get to the first sale, on average. So the learning curve is still the same. Even with the super high advancements of technology and education and information and communication, the learning curve to actually get your feet planted in the business, grab some momentum, is still basically the same as it was when I started 21 years ago. So I'm seeing it all happen in real time through other agents trying to help and encourage them to. I'm teaching them everything. I wish I would have known.
Dave Charest: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm curious as that. Like, I mean, obviously, like, the eight months to get your first sale, but, like, how long before or how long did it take you to actually find your feet where you're like, all right, like, I'm good at this. Like, this is a thing that I'm gonna. Like, I'm happy doing this.
Ricky Carruth: Well, when I hit that first deal, I started closing two a month.
Dave Charest: Okay?
Ricky Carruth: I closed two on the same day. It was my first deal, and I started closing two a month, and I was pretty consistent. And then the market blew up. You know, that was 2002. And then three, the market exploded. It was just like the market was in 2021. A couple of years ago, it was the exact same market, just no inventory, you know, more than asking price, multiple offers, the same market. So I kind of got caught up in that. I made a lot of money. I started flipping houses. I borrowed money to flip the houses, and I over leveraged. And when the market crashed, it was like a house of cards. It all just kind of came crashing down. So to answer your question, like, yeah, immediately I thought I like knew everything, you know, as soon as I started selling stuff. And then when I lost everything, I said oh crap, I don't know anything. Now I got to go back to roofing houses, I was sleeping in my car, eating out of people's refrigerators, I worked on an oil rig for a while, was serving tables, and that's when I actually learned how to build the business. Right. And so the difference was that the first time around it was just all about the deal and the money. Every deal was just to try to get the deal done and I had zero connection to the client afterwards. I had very little like connection with them during the deal. It was just literally to get the deal done. That's a surefire way to fail in any business really. Right. The most important thing I learned, there's two things. One that closings happen every day no matter what. I mean in the worst of markets, when you look back at 2008, 2006, seven, 8910, if you look at the stats of real estate closings and prices and all that stuff and just really dig in, you look back at that, you think based on the number of transactions and prices and all this, you look at it now after the fact, knowing what all has happened, and you look back at that and say that wasn't so bad after all. And that was one of the scariest times in economic, in our modern economic history. But you look at it and you realize man that wasn't so bad. It's just when you're going through it, the uncertainty of what might happen, you're like, you're kind of paralyzed. And if you've never been through any market cycles you don't realize closings are still happening. It's like right now a lot of agents are, you know, discouraged and the market is shifted and stuff. National association of Realtors came out two days ago with their report for existing home sales which showed an increase from January to February of 14.5%. Thats a big increase. They also show that were on track right now to do 4.6 million sales for the year in the country, which is a big year. 4 million was what 2008 was. That was the worst year of the two thousands was 2008. It was 4 million sales in the US. Thats as bad as its going to get. But its like man were in one of the most incredible industries that literally just cannot be taken out. The only thing that can be taken out is the way that we perceive our perception on that. The market actually dictates our success, which it doesnt. Weve got 17 pending deals in little old Alabama, $8 million worth, 23 active listings right now were booming. And you see headlines right now. Price is down for the first time in eleven years. Prices are down year over year. That's where they're getting that right. Prices are down like less than 1% year over year, but they're actually up 2% from February to now. In the last 30 days, the median home prices are actually up. So it's like it came down from June, which was the peak, and it's bottomed out. I'm not saying it bottomed out. It could go back, it could go down some more. This could be a false rally. But if we're going into a recession, which most people claim, and you look at history, nine out of ten recessions, real estate prices went up, mortgage rates went down, right. Inflation went down. So this is going to be an incredible year. And by the way, 2023 will go down as the third largest year in the history of the country in terms of the volume of real estate bought and sold in the US, only third to 2021, which is the highest year ever. 2022, which is the second highest year ever. And 2023 would be the third highest year ever in history, right. And were way higher than we were, pre pandemic levels in terms of transactions and prices. And we could even take another huge hit on the market and still be in amazing shape. So its all perspective. And my experience through being through all this has kind of taught me to laugh in the face of these market cycles and to really take advantage of them, because theres 110% chance that the markets going to rebound. So the first thing I learned was that closings never stop. The only reason that closing stop in your business is because you quit working, right, or you let the market dictate how much effort you're going to put in. The second thing I learned was that it's all about people. When I talk to a prospect, I could care less if they want to buy or sell property for me or not. Today, my goal is a to just see how they're doing. That's all I really care about. And if I can use whatever property they're inquiring about or whatever property they own as an excuse to get into a conversation, to get to know this person right and see exactly what it is they're trying to do, real estate wise, what I can do to help them. I'm just trying to help them do what they want to do. I'm not trying to get them to buy or sell or try to magically say something that gets them to sign a contract or set an appointment. I'm trying to listen to what it is that they're trying to do and create a lifelong relationship with every single person I meet. And when you do that, you build your database, you do your weekly email. My whole thing, I dont know what you know about my business, but my whole thing, bro, is the weekly email. I made 100,000 cold calls during the 15 years, and I say 15 years because 15 years in was 2017. That was the first year I made a million dollars. And that was the year I quit prospecting. I didnt have to prospect anymore, because from 2007, the moment I got back in the business, when I realized it was about people, I started doing this weekly email. And I've never quit doing the weekly email. Every Wednesday since 2007. And it got up so big, where by 2017, I didn't have to make calls anymore. I have to do anything anymore, because I've taken such good care of all these people that are now getting this weekly email from me. Literally 2014, I sold 100 deals, right? I've sold 100 deals every year since. Okay, you know, 14, I was still prospecting and building. 15. I was still prospecting and building, 16, still building 17, I didnt have to do that. I didnt have to spend all that time prospecting and stuff, because just the residual business from the email will continue to produce those hundred deals. 17. 1819, 2021. 22. 100 deals all those years. Only off the weekly email. No social media, no print, no direct mail, no open houses, no networking events, no zillow leads, nothing. Just building a great brand, taking care of people, treating people like family, and doing a weekly email so that they never forget who I am and what I do, and that I'm here to help.
Dave Charest: What got you to that point where you were like, all right, I'm going to do a weekly email.
Ricky Carruth: Dude, I'm so glad you asked that, because it is a very interesting question. What happened was, I was on the oil rig the whole year of 2007. And in 2002, when I got in the business, there was an agent in my office, and he taught me everything. He was so nice. He told me everything. It gives me chills, like, like remembering, like that whole thing. Well, when I got out of the business and I went worked on the oil rig, I was looking through the market, right? Because I never, when I got out of the business and lost everything, I foreclosed on houses. They came and caught my car. I had nothing right. So my friend gave me their Ford contour beat up car. I had to get in through the passenger. There was no radio. I had a boombox in the backseat. I had to ride the brakes at night when I passed cops because the tail lights didnt work and working on an oil rig. But the two things I didnt let go was my real estate license. I continued to pay my fees for real estate, MLS continue an ed. And I kept my cell phone. So I have the same cell phone number I had back in like 99 or whenever I got my number and I never let those two, those are the only two bills I had. I didn't pay insurance, car payments, utilities, rent, nothing. I was sleeping in my car. Well in 2000, I want to say like February or something, in 2007, maybe like mid year, I was just doing my thing, looking through MLS and here I am, out of the business and a lot of other agents were too. And I'm looking at MLS and I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong, like, what's happening here. I'm the most honest, hardworking guy that I know, like, how am I working on an oil rig when I had it, when I was like a millionaire? And what I realized in MLS was that this agent that had mentored me all those years back, he had sold 30 properties, something like that. 30 or 36 properties or something in 2006. And I was like, oh my gosh, how in the world did this happen? And so I went to him and this was the guy that mentored me from day one. And so back in the day, day one, he was like, here's how you do it, Ricky. He was like, postcards, letters, emails and phone calls. This is it.
Dave Charest: Cool.
Ricky Carruth: So I called him in 2007, all these years later, and I said, man, dude, you sold 30 something properties. When everybody's out of the business, I'm working on an oil rig. Like, you gotta tell me what's going on. Like, how are you doing this? I gotta, I wanna get back in the business. He said, yeah, come over next time you're, you know, back off the rig. Come over and we'll sit down. Come to my office at my house. I'll show you everything. I'm like, bet. So go to his house. He opens up everything. He starts showing me everything. Guess what it was. Postcards, letters, emails and phone calls. It was the same activities. The only difference was, is he was so smart that he was just playing the market. He was sending out marketing that was showing, hey, the beaches are just as wide as they have always been. But it's 50% off now, 50% off for the same beautiful beaches. Who wants in? Basically. And that's how he was doing it. And prices were down so much, it was so easy to find buyers. And when I got back in 2008, man, it was so easy, bro, because there was no agents. Condos were 50% cheaper than they were just a few years ago. It is like so easy, man. Like, but anyway, so I started to like get back in, right? And I was like, okay, I got it. It hit me. So I was on the oil rig and I started sending out emails. I had 1000 people respond and 20 people bought something. So that was my 2008. I made $80,000 that year, which was twice what I made on the oil rig the year before. And I was like, oh my God, it's really happening, right? So the weekly email came to be because out of those thousand people that email me back, a lot of them were hitting me back saying, hey, can you send me a weekly list of foreclosures? Because back then there was like so many foreclosures and they were like, send me a weekly list of foreclosures. So I'm like, yeah, so I heard that from like five or ten people, the same thing. So I was like, I put those five or ten people in a database and I started sending them the foreclosures. And then as the market started to transition out of foreclosures, you know, we went through 2008, nine, I was putting things in there. It wasn't just foreclosure. I was given a market updates, properties, I sold new listings, you know, I'm providing value here. And then as the foreclosures went away by, you know, 2012 and 13 foreclosures were gone. It just kind of morphed into what it is today. You know, it's just a custom weekly email that I sit down and spend time developing it, thinking about what would bring my clients the most value, what is the most groundbreaking news in the market in terms of real estate down here, or even just local news that I can make sure that theyre aware of, give my two cent on and present it in a way thats very easy to navigate. Thats how it came to be. And man, its just crazy to think back then I didnt realize what I was doing was building a brand. I didnt realize that I was accumulating people. Once I got to that point, I saw what the weekly email was doing back in 2008. Nine and ten, I was all in on it. I was like, now the game for me is how many friends can I create in the market, primarily with property owners to get them into the weekly email. I knew that thats all I needed to do is if I could just accomplish really creating a huge database of people in the market who were getting this weekly email that I would succeed.
Dave Charest: Preston, im curious, dude, where was your mind? Youre on this oil rig? Where were you mentally? There were just like, you're doing so well, and then all of a sudden you lose all of that. Like, just where were you?
Ricky Carruth: Like, how was my mental health during that time?
Dave Charest: Yeah, yeah.
Ricky Carruth: I was perfectly fine. Because the thing is, if I lose everything today, my life doesn't change much at all because, and I see this a lot with part time agents who want to go full time, who hate their current job. They're like, Ricky, I want to go full time agent. You know, I just hate this job and stuff. And I'm like, well, hold on a second, bro. Like think about this for a second right now, okay? Your life, you wake up in the morning, okay, you eat breakfast and stuff, you do your morning routine, you know, you go to work, right, and you work your ass off all day and then you come home, you eat dinner and stuff, hang out with the family and everything, go to bed, you do it all again the next day, right? Right. Cool. So I'm like, what do you think is going to change when you go full time real estate agent, right? Are you going to wake up and not work your ass off all day? Are you going to not wake up early anymore? Are you, you not, you know, are you not going to come home and spend time with the family, go to bed, do it all over again? Your life doesn't change at all, right? Its the same thing. You may think you like real estate more, and so thats whats drawing you to not like what youre doing now. And you may not like what youre doing and that may be the source of some of your discomfort right now. But if you look at it from a 30,000 foot view, your life is not changing at all. Youre getting up at the same time. Youre working just as hard. Your life is exactly the same, right? Same thing with this. When I lost everything, I worked the next day, whenever the last day I did real estate, I worked all day. And then the day I decided not to do real estate, I got up and I literally got and got on a roof that day and it just worked. My life didnt change at all. I didnt have anything. I went from a Cadillac and a hummer to a Ford contour that was beat up and I didnt have these fancy houses I had and everything, but honestly, I was so young that when I did lose it all, it was almost a relief because it was like, that was a lot of pressure to own all that stuff all of a sudden. I mean, like, I didn't feel that pressure. And like, like, at the time I wasn't like, oh, I'm glad I don't own all this stuff anymore. But what I'm saying is, my point is, is that I just continue to work. Like, I didn't care if I was roofing real estate, oil rig, serving tables, whatever, it just doesn't matter to me. I'm just going to work. So mentally, I was fine. I, you know what was really cool was that there were 40, 50 year olds and even 60 year olds who went through the same thing I went through that were right next to me, flipping houses and doing developments and over leveraging and lost everything. And I watched them crumble with me at the same time. But I was 23 and they were 57 and I was like, thank you, jesus. Like, I knew that because of the age part of when that happened in my life that there was a super incredible blessing because, like, if I lost everything today and had to go back to roofing right now, I could do it physically, but it wouldn't be like back then. I could hop on a roof. I was like a monkey. Like, I could hop on a roof.
Dave Charest: Yeah, right? Yeah.
Ricky Carruth: Swing around and like, you know, screw metal to a roof upside down and stuff.
Dave Charest: Yeah.
Ricky Carruth: For that to happen, when it did to me to learn those life lessons of how markets work, how it's about the people and really kind of put that foundation mentally in place for the building blocks of this second round of business I was fixing to encounter, it was a real blessing and I knew it at the time, so I was good mentally.
Dave Charest: So what gets you to then this place then? You know, I know you mentioned, like, oh, I have to share what I'm learning here with other people, but, like, what drives you to do that? Why?
Ricky Carruth: Boredom. I hit the pinnacle of real estate, you know, the top in my MLS for eight years in a row, number one remax agent in the state of Alabama. Won all the awards, made all the money, all that stuff. And what was I going to just do that every year? It was just boring. It just got boring. This is funny, back in like 2010 or eleven or twelve, somewhere in there, I decided to write the book and I would start it, throw it away, started over again, throw it away. And every time it was better and better. And then I would, like, just leave it alone for, like, three years. I would come back and I would mess around with it. And so I always had in the back of my head that I wanted to write a book. And when I came back from the oil rig and I learned all this relationship weekly email brand building stuff, I knew then that I had something I wanted to share, right? But at that time, I didn't really have the success to back it up yet. So when I actually did hit number one and all this stuff, it really kind of energized me to start thinking about the book. And then Remax asked me to speak at this thing, you know, one year, it was 2016, towards the end of the year, and I was like, I'd gotten serious about writing the book that year, and I was, like, getting close to done. I still needed a couple more chapters, and I went and I spoke at this thing. It's funny, because about as sick as I am now is how sick I was. Like, I was just as sick. And this was my first speech, and I was, like, not feeling good. I was sniffling, nervous. I had a suit on. I never wear suit. I was the last speaker of an eight hour day thing where there was, like, so many speakers. And I got up there and did my thing, and it was so cool because so many agents came and stood in line to talk to me after the event. And that's when it hit me. I was like, wow, so many people need to hear what I'm saying. And so that motivated me to just hurry up and finish the book, get it to the editor. And then the book took off, and I wrote a second book, and the books took off. And then I started creating content. I was like, I want to be a coach. I want to help agents. And I started out charging, and then after about six months, I realized going free is a lot better because I can help a lot more people that aren't willing to pay, and I can build a bigger brand. I can have more followers, subscribers, more loyal fans that know, hey, I, he put it out all on the line for us. He told us his deepest, darkest business secrets. I'm making millions. I've made millions of dollars because of what he's told us, and he never charged me a dime, right? That's the loyal fans, and that's what I have. And now, you know, I'm six years into that business. I've got people that are number one remaxes in their state, number ones in their office, number ones in their counties, and all that stuff, it's really cool, and it's really cool to think about where everything's going to be in the next five years with the real estate coaching part. But it was just boredom. I was just like, what's the next mountain I can climb? And I didn't use social media at all. My real estate business, zero at all. Nothing posted. Nothing at all. And so that was in 2016. Social media had been around for a second. There were people that were obviously doing well on social media and building massive brands by then. And I was like, okay, you know, game on. Let me try to figure out the social media thing and let me apply that towards the real estate industry and see what I can do.
Dave Charest: Robert. So when you think of the zero to diamond, right, this is the business part of that, right?
Ricky Carruth: So, like, yeah.
Dave Charest: Then what are your priorities like there? Like, what does success look like there for you then?
Ricky Carruth: For me, the greatest real estate coach in history, you know, is not going to be the one that made the most money, okay? It's going to be the one that helped the most agents. So that's all it is for me. I want to win that game for being able to touch the most agents and being able to kind of cement myself as kind of the. That legendary coach when I'm dead and gone, that my trainings and coachings and social media videos and all that stuff just continues to live on, trickles down, and just helps generation after generation understand that it's not about handling objections or getting the listing appointment or get them to sign a contract. It's not about doing some kind of sales trick or script. You know what I mean? It's about, you're a human. I'm a human. I do real estate. What can I do to help you in that, in that world? What are you looking to do? Nothing. Great. Love to work with you when you decide to do something. Okay. If I stay in touch with you, man, I'm right here. I live close. We're basically family. See, the thing is, man, is that think about this. You think about 8 billion people on planet Earth. Think about what's the odds that one of those 8 billion people live within, like, let's say, a 50 miles radius of you. What's the odds? Right? And let's take it a step further. How many humans have ever been on Earth? And how many humans are going to be on Earth? Like trillions, I would think. I don't know. I'm just guessing, you know, hundreds of billions, I don't know what the numbers are, nobody does because nobody knows how far the future is going to go. But think about that. Not only to live in a 50 miles radius of you on planet Earth with the 8 billion who are alive at this moment, but what's the probability that they're actually alive at this moment and live 50 miles in the 50 miles radius of you?
Dave Charest: Right, right.
Ricky Carruth: What I'm saying is, is that there's a deep connection. Just because the fact that you live right down the road or 20 minutes away or something, there's a deep connection there. And people that they want to act like everybody's a stranger, right. I do live calls on my YouTube channel. I call prospects live to show everybody how to do this. You know, how this is a treat. People like their family business, that's me. And I'm not a cold caller, I'm a cold caller, but I'm more of a, I don't care how you get your leads, I want to teach you how to communicate with them in a way that they know who you are as a person, that you care, that you're hardworking, you're dependable, honest, professional, consistent, and if you can articulate who you are as a person to them, instead of somebody you're not, if you follow the mainstream coaching and training, you're articulating a sales scammer. Like you show up, you talk to a property owner, and you basically, in so many words, you're saying, hey, you don't know me and I don't know you, but will you sell your house so I can make some money? Thats how it comes across. I want to come across of, hey, you dont know me, I dont know you, but what can I do to help you today? What can I do for you? Not what you can do for me, and by the way, if you dont want to do anything cool, lets stay in touch. Whats your email? Is it okay if I stay in touch? Bam. So when they talk to you, theyre like, wow, that was a different conversation. Now they get a weekly email every single week, and they see your name, they're like, there's that Ricky guy I talked to last week, he's every single Wednesday, he's on the money every Wednesday. I like that he's, the email shows that he's consistent, shows that he's dependable, he's working hard, he's knowledgeable, he's in the market selling stuff, he's sending me valuable information so the email is an extension also of who you are, right. And it shows them how dependable, professional, consistent you are. And it kind of solidifies the exact person that they want to be their real estate agent when the day comes. And it's also a safety net on the back of your business because I've had so many people that I show property to who didn't buy ghosted me. Right. They get the weekly email, three years later they'll call, hey, remember me? I'm thinking, yeah, I remember you. I'm thinking the back of my head. Yeah, I remember you. Like, oh, cool, I saw this property, I want to go look at it. And they go and they buy so many stories of people that came back from the dead I five, six years later, not to mention past clients and stuff, who we lose touch with people when you do hundreds and hundreds of deals, its hard to touch everybody personally, call them back. But when they see that email coming through and they know what kind of service you gave them during the deal, youve got lifelong loyal clients, Robert.
Dave Charest: So im curious then. So on the real estate side, youre doing this thing. What are you taking from what youve learned there and then what are you doing on the, like, like how are you using constant contact, for example, on the zero design inside? Like how are you using it there?
Ricky Carruth: Yeah, so I've got two accounts, I've got my real estate account where it's all my real estate clients. So that goes out to about 19,000 people. I have 8000 opens a week, which is interesting to me because, you know, that's just opens, that's just engagement for me. There's another 8000 people there who aren't opening it who are going to do business with me. They're just not ready yet and they appreciate seeing it in their inbox every week. That impression really means something. So it's the same thing with social media. You know, you do a post, you get 30 likes, you think, oh, that, that was bad. But the impressions were 400. Heck, 400 people saw you working hard, they saw your information. I'm just cause 30 took the time to double tap doesn't mean that 400 people didn't see and appreciate what youre doing. So its not just the opens, right? Theres a lot of non opens that really are super valuable behind the scenes thatll do something with you years down the road. But thats the real estate side that I built that up to. So I do, every Wednesday I do an email to my real estate database. Keeps us busy. Then on the zero to diamond side, ive got a database of around 200,000 agents and on that side I do about, I dont know, four or five emails a week, pretty much one every day during the week. I got emails going out Saturday and Sunday this week. But Im just sending out market updates, keeping everybody in tune with my market insights because Im an analyst. Im looking at the market all day real estate, analyzing whats happening with prices and inventory and supply and demand and interest rates and all that. So I'm keeping everybody in tune with that as well as sharing like YouTube videos, you know, me making live calls, tutorials, stuff like that. So in events, you know, travel and speaking, make sure everybody that's following me knows where I'm going to be, when I'm going to be there in case they want to come see me live and stuff like that.
Dave Charest: It's interesting. I was just doing a webinar earlier today and like always this frequency question comes up and I think it depends on the business that you're in and what it is that you're actually doing. And I always kind of say you got to kind of figure out the audience and all of that. What I think is interesting about what you do in that youre saying, yeah, youre doing pretty much daily emails is this works for you? And ive seen some of the examples of the emails that you send. I mean this is a quick like, hey, heres some information, like heres something of value. These are quick emails right?
Ricky Carruth: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean the weekly email spend a lot of time on its one a week. Its very in depth and its super, you know, this is one a week going to you guys flip over to the real estate agents on the real estate coaching side and it's just a quick pop because I mean I'm doing all this myself. I don't have anybody writing these emails. So it's just whatever piece of really valuable information I need them to know about today. Here it is. Here's two sentences. Here's what it is. Here's a link to watch or here's a link to do this, you know, or maybe there's not a link, maybe it's just here's what I want you to know today that might help you in your business. So I've heard the same thing. Don't do more than, you know, one a week or whatever, open rates and stuff. But if you look at my analytics there, I've got a pretty consistent 40,000 opens on that list, which for me I'm incredibly thrilled about to have that many people opening those emails five times a week.
Dave Charest: Well, since you are in there doing this and you're doing this all yourself, what's your favorite feature of constant contact then?
Ricky Carruth: Well, I'm really old school, right? So. And I got into constant contact back when there wasn't a lot of the features that are available now. So it's kind of hard for me to dive into that since there's so many new features that I don't even know about. You know, I just use it just for the email. I can't say enough about like, literally because of the weekly email, I was able to step out of building my business. Right? If it. Here, I'll put it like this. If it wasn't for the weekly email I was doing to my real estate clients, then I wouldn't have been able to step into coaching at all. Okay. The reason I say that's because Im prospecting. Im prospecting, prospecting, prospecting all day long. Trying to get more clients and help people buy and sell real estate and build my database. So as time goes on and I hit 2017, where the database got big enough, where I dont have to prospect anymore because its just residual business coming in. I continue to close 100 deals a year because of just the email. No social media, no nothing. Just the email. I literally turned the prospecting key off. Quit prospecting altogether. Now, that opened up my time. Yeah, see, that was a part of the reason too, why I got into coaching and stuff. Because I kind of got bored. Not only with just the success of being a real estate agent, but also I had all this extra time on my hands because of the weekly email, because I didnt have to prospect anymore. Im like, okay, Im bored and I have time. What am I going to do, right? So it was really because of that. I mean, if it wasnt for the email, then I wouldn't have been able to build my business to the point where I could continue making residual money while I was building this other business from scratch.
Dave Charest: Well, that's going to juice you up a little bit too, right at this point where now you're showing others how to do that and then they're having success. Right? That's going to make you feel good.
Ricky Carruth: No, dude, I get, let's just say tens of messages. I get thousands of messages every week. Tens of them are agents telling me how they're crushing it, how they found me two years ago and now they're crushing it. We're going to have to quit now theyre crushing it or whatever its back in 2017 when I started this, I lost 100,000 on the coaching business. I lost 100,000 the next year on the coaching business. So Im sitting here spending half of my time on a business that loses six figures. When I have this million dollar real estate business right here, im like why am I spending 50% of my time losing six figures when I could be putting all that time and juicing up this seven figure business? But what kept me going was the messages from agents saying this is helping me, thank you so much and all that. And Im like man this is working, this has to work. Im going to keep going. Im keep trying. It was a grind but I made it through. So thank God. But yeah it is humbling.
Dave Charest: Yeah. So listen I want to ask you, theres going to be real estate people listening to this and you tell me what are the maybe if you had to go like top three things, what would you want to say to people?
Ricky Carruth: Well thats easy. Call property owners all morning, just develop just your goal should be to create five new friends a day with property owners every day. They can go to my YouTube channel, anybody listening, just go to my YouTube and watch me call prospects live. Youll see exactly what Im talking about. Youre not trying to pressure anybody into doing anything. You dont even care if they want to do anything. Youre just trying to use the property to get to know them, to see if theres anything you do to help them now or later. Super easy. Five new friends a day collect the email thats from nine to twelve every day right? 08:00 youre organizing your business 815 studying the market 830 who are we calling and why? 09:00 were calling nine to twelve go to lunch and then marketing all afternoon. Your social media, SEO, direct mail, weekly email, all that stuff. So heres the three things right calling property owners and whatever capacity that looks like to you. I dont care what it is. If its zillow leads, YouTube leads cold call at I don't care what it is. I'm just telling you what you got to do. I can tell you what I do. I just get the phone numbers on Red X and just call them. It's all I do. Why not? It's a penny a piece instead of spending whatever. So okay the three things, one, call property owners, make five new friends a day. Two, do social media all afternoon. Three, do a weekly email. It's all you got to do. You do that. Five new friends a day with the infrastructure of the weekly email, whatever social media. You do five new friends a day for 250 working days a year over five years is 6000 people. Okay. Now, how big is your business? If within five years you've got 6000 property owners that own the exact properties you want to sell, that you've talked to verbally, that you've created connection with, gave you their email and are getting a weekly email from you on the same day of the week forever? How big is your business? I can tell you you're one of the top agents in your market. And if you're not the top, you're about to be the top. It's really that simple.
Dave Charest: Well, friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number one, commit to consistency. Ricky hasn't missed a weekly email since 2007. It's why he no longer needs to prospect to close 100 deals a year. Keeping your business top of mind through this consistency can come back to you many times over. You just need to commit. Number two, the secret is often simple. Remember what Ricky's mentor first taught him in 2002? Postcards, letters, emails and phone calls. After Ricky lost everything, he went back to his mentor to see how he was still successful while the market was down. The answer postcards, letters, emails and phone calls. The secret is often simple. It's not about finding a silver bullet, but rather staying true to what works. And lastly, here are the top three things to be a successful real estate agent. I number one, call property owners all morning. Number two, do social media all afternoon. And number three, do a weekly email. All right friend, here's your action item. If you haven't already, choose a consistent email frequency that works for you. This is where the magic happens. Think about it. If you eat well regularly, you get healthier. If you work out regularly, you get stronger. And if you email regularly, you get more business. Commit to being consistent. You'll be glad you did. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. If you have questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me directly at dave.charest@charestconstantcontact.com. If you did enjoy today's episode, please take a moment to leave us a review. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. Well friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.