By 25, Carruth had lost everything. The collapse wasn’t abstract—it was personal. He went bankrupt, returned to roofing houses, slept in his car, and eventually took a job on an oil rig just to stay afloat. It would be almost three years before he came back to real estate. But when he did, everything was different.
Ricky didn’t just rebuild his business. He rewired the way he thought about it. That lesson—earned, not borrowed—became the core of how he would operate from then on. Over the next decade, he quietly built a high-volume business grounded in consistency, relationships, and communication. No team. No assistants. Just calls, emails, and follow-through. From 2014 onward, Carruth closed over 100 deals a year on his own—making him one of the most productive solo agents in the country.
In 2017, Carruth began coaching other agents—not by selling access, but by giving everything away for free. He launched Zero to Diamond, the first completely open-access real estate coaching platform. No upsells. No monthly fee. Just the systems he used to build his business—scripts, templates, routines—made available to anyone willing to do the work.