Bigger. Better. Bolder. Inman Connect is heading to San Diego. Join thousands of real estate pros, connect with the power of the Inman Community, and gain insights from hundreds of leading minds shaping the industry. If you’re ready to grow your business and invest in yourself, this is where you need to be. Go BIG in San Diego!
Alabama Gulf Coast real estate expert and coach Ricky Carruth has signed on to real estate services company RLTYco as an ambassador, the company has informed Inman.
Carruth was born and raised on the Gulf Coast and has worked in the industry for more than 20 years. He leads the Diamond Group at eXp Realty and is a coach, investor and speaker, and active on Instagram (about 270K followers) and YouTube (about 110K followers). Carruth is also a contributor for Inman News.
TAKE THE INMAN INTEL INDEX SURVEY FOR MARCH
As RLTYco has grown — the company announced a $20 million Series A earlier this year led by Altriarch — it has sought out partners and ambassadors who could help spread awareness about the company. Since Ryan Serhant, one of the company’s ambassadors and an investor, is active on social media and a well-known face in the industry, founder Briggs Elwell said he sought out his opinion about who to approach next for spreading brand awareness.
“Ryan and I were speaking with our other partner, Dan Kennedy, and preparing to be able to scale and grow the business across the country [and] we clearly needed to align ourselves with additional ambassadors and partners that could work with the business and be helpful in growing it,” Elwell told Inman. “Long story short is, Ryan, we asked if he had any recommendations, and he gave us an incredibly short list with a few names on it that we were really excited to proceed with — and most notably, we’ve got Ricky right here.”
Carruth himself said he never heard of RLTYco — which provides commission advance services, a health insurance network, tax services and more to agents — before Serhant introduced him to Elwell and Kennedy. But the problems in running a business that RLTYco addresses with its services are things that Carruth has been working to help agents solve for years.
“All the decisions I make at this point in my life are all focused around, not money, but the impact it could make on agents, primarily,” Carruth said. “When I started my coaching business, the mission was and still is to reduce the failure rate in the real estate industry one agent at a time. I probably leave a lot of money on the table for the sake of making decisions around what’s best for agents. And this is one of those, in my opinion, great decisions to continue that mission.”
“I realized pretty quickly that the company aligns perfectly with serving agents and helping agents, bringing something new to the marketplace in terms of providing more W2 benefits.”
Carruth added that he’d be spreading the word about RLTYco on his social channels and through his agent training and education programs.
Serhant said he first came across Carruth through his social media channels and then met him in person at an event where they were both speakers. He quickly realized Carruth’s “like and trust factor with salespeople,” which is a reflection of how much respect he’s garnered in the industry.
“When Briggs and Dan and I were thinking about bringing in new partners in different markets who just brought in a wealth of knowledge, I immediately said, ‘Ricky makes all the sense in the world,'” Serhant said. “When we think about the salesperson who wants to have access to the greatest resources, that person aligns themselves with Ricky and his coaching. And I think there couldn’t be a better partnership.”
In conjunction with its Series A round, RLTYco has now rolled out its four products — RLTY Capital, RLTY Tax, RLTY Legal and RLTY Health — across the country, Elwell said. The company will also be unveiling new products over the next six to 12 months to help agents achieve their goals.
“We’re trying to make real estate agents’ lives easier so they can function more like a salaried employee and not be distracted by the minutia of healthcare and payroll,” Elwell said.
