How to Get People to Say Yes | Ryan Serhant

Embarrassment and New Beginnings

0:00You've got to be okay with being embarrassed. You've got to be okay with people talking poorly about you. You have to be okay with, with bad comments. Those people make more money. If you're willing to embarrass yourself, you make more money. Every time.

0:18Okay, I wanted to start this in a way that you've never started a podcast before. Oh, God. I have a gift for you. Oh, no one gets me gifts. Oh, I think you'll like this. What is this? Three months. Did you get me a watch? Holy macaroni. Crazy. Thank you very much. That's cool. Look at that. Note for anyone watching, if you ever invite me on your podcast going forward and you don't first give me an awesome gift, I'm going to walk out.

0:50It's like in sales. You know, when I first got into sales, I wanted to do bigger ones. I want to do more expensive sales. That's what you want to do. You don't want to sell the same thing over and over. Even if you're great at it, you also get used to it. Burnout is doing the same thing over and over again and not seeing results. And the way to move up in price point is putting yourself in high price point situations. And so I will always tell people, like, you have to level yourself up and then you have to say no to everything else. And it's really hard for people to do because you get used to paying your monthly bills with

1:23what I used to do. I know what I want to go do, but I don't know if I can get there. They don't take the bet on themselves and then they spend their entire life doing what they're comfortable doing because it's much easier to do that and complain than it is to actually take real risk. And so the same way, I was like, right, I don't do rentals anymore. New York City is 70% rentals. I do sales. Only sales. Brutal. Brutal couple of months. Same thing here. I no longer do podcasts that don't start with gifts. That's why I was talking that way.

The Million Dollar Listing Audition

1:52Amazing. Well, let's talk about this a little bit. The transition between you doing rentals and you doing sales was fascinating for me because it was almost a fake it till you make it situation. There was a story about a Bravo crew that was like following you around. And at the time you were like, oh my God, I don't want them to see my life. So you did all the things. Okay. Tell me this story. First of all, first of all, it's not fake it till you make it. Um, when I hear people say fake it till you make it, they say that because it rhymes and

2:24it's easy to say, but it also implies lying, which I just think is the worst, especially for anyone who's an independent contractor or who's an entrepreneur or who's ever had to sell anything to anyone. Everything sounds great until someone lies to your face. So I've always aligned myself with being future me. That's it. I'm not faking anything. I know to my core, the person I'm going to show you right now is the person I'm going to become 12 to 24 months from now. I've written it down. I've written it out and I will manifest it.

2:54And when I do it that way, maybe I don't become the exact person I thought I was going to be, but I become some alternate reality version of that person. So in 2010, there was an open casting call for the New York version of a TV show called Million Dollar Listing. And Bravo was going to start franchising it when they wanted to do it in New York. And they were looking for the best and brightest and hungriest real estate agents under the age of 30 at that time. And I had been in the business for 18 months. I got my license the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy because I needed to pay my rent

3:26and I was acting in the city and I had no money and I didn't want to move home. And so a friend said, get your real estate license. You're going to memorize information. You're going to play Yes And improv games on the street with new clients every day. All you have to do is rent apartments. You get a small percentage of your commission and then you can pay your bills. I had to make $2,000 a month. That is the whole reason I got into real estate was to make $2,000 a month. And I saw this casting call come through and I'd always wanted to act. That was my, that was my goal. That's why I came to New York in the first place. And so I went and 3,000 agents plus minus showed up to an open casting call at the Hudson Hotel

4:01in Times Square. And I didn't hear anything for a couple months. And then they called back and said, we whittled it down to whatever it was, 15 or 1600. And then somehow through all that process over the course of 2010, I made it down to, they were going to follow around 16 of us to find three. And so they were going to follow us for half a day. If I show them what my life is like right now from my tiny little studio apartment and I take them on the subway, I'm not getting on a TV show called Million Dollar Listing. And so I wrote down, if Ryan was on Million Dollar Listing, who would he be?

4:37If I'm the casting director, who do I want to cast? I probably don't take the subway. If I'm one of the best, I'd probably get driven or I drive, borrowed a Range Rover from a guy I worked with. And then I coordinated some different listings that I could bring them to. And I was like, I'm going to have you meet me at the gym. I had them meet me at 5 a.m. Because I also knew there was a little psychology to the process where if I could tire them out, right, they would just be so exhausted with me that they would say, well, I don't know. He was just, he was just great. And so they're from LA. So they were three hours behind and they were here.

5:07I had them meet me at 5 a.m. So in their brain, it was 2 a.m. They're all exhausted. And then they're boxing with my shirt off, whatever. Then I go into my apartment and I take off all my clothes and I just take a shower. And they didn't know what to do. I was like, you're not going to do anything with this. You're not going to air it. But I need them to know that I would have no filter and I would say whatever's on my mind and I would do anything I felt like at all times. And so I just took a shower and they're just like, they didn't know what to do. I'm like, what is this guy doing? I also knew that Ryan a year from now is going to be a lot busier than Ryan is today.

5:40So everyone I knew, I said, call me tomorrow morning. You're number one job. If I don't pick up, doesn't matter anything. You have to call me over and over and over. And then I got a friend of mine. His name was Tobin Ludwig, who I had met in acting classes. So I couldn't convince anyone to actually come on camera with me to be a client. Super scary. So I said, you're going to be, uh, just be a hedge funder and I need to show you an apartment on camera. Okay. You can be cool with that. He's like, great.

6:11What's my mood? Like, dude, you are the man. So he shows up late. We get to this penthouse in Gramercy that I had access to. He's got a half eaten bagel egg and cheese. He's got the financial times under his arm. He shows up and he's just pissed off and angry. And we just do this tour. And then I got a call, um, from my next appointment that I was going to take them to saying they had a real showing coming through and you can't show up with your cameras. And so I didn't know what to do. So I said, goodbye, Tobin. He left and I went to the bathroom and I have a core memory of this.

6:41I just went to like a full sweat. Cause I was like, you know, you, you set up the whole plan, you're ready to go. And then what do we do? And I remembered I had gone on a date with somebody like a year before that in New York. And we got to the date, it's this restaurant. And she, we talked for like five minutes and she said, I'm going to go to the bathroom. She got to go to the bathroom and I just waited and she came back and she said, I'm so sorry. Something's come up. I have to leave. And she left. And then ghosted me totally after that before ghosting was even a phrase. So something I did or how I looked or something threw her off.

7:14Um, but I thought about that moment forever. People want what they can't have. And when you surprise them, like in the art of war, they don't know what to do. And it makes them double down their focus on you. And so I'm in the bathroom. And I'm like, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do what that girl did to me. And so I walked out there. I'm like, guys, I know you're booked and scheduled to come with me to the next showing. Something's come up. That's pretty urgent. I have to take care of it. I'm sorry if this isn't going to work out. And I just went downstairs. I left them in the apartment.

7:45I didn't know what to do. I was panicking. I got in the Range Rover and I just fucking busted it through a red light and I was gone. And then they went on to everybody else who really tried, who showed them their life and really tried and really wanted it. And they called me the next day and said, we're going to film the first season of this show with four of you. We put it down to four. One of you is not going to be in the final cut. So best of luck. Do you know why that story inspires me? Why? Because like when my kids, they're like, you know, they want good grades. And so I asked them, I'm like, imagine the camera crew is following an A plus student

8:19around and how do they spend their day studying? How do they allocate their time? How do they prepare? And then do those things and you will get A pluses. And I mean, effectively, that's a version of what you did, which was amazing. Again, lying is very different. Yeah. But I think it's true. And I do this to my daughter now and I do it to our own agents and my staff and everybody. Like, tell me who you want to be. Yeah. Who do you want to be? Act like that person today. If you want to be somebody who has money, act like it.

8:51Don't act like the person you used to be. Act like the person you're going to become. And I promise you, like that mental mind shift alone will carry you forward because the world is attracted to confidence and competence. And so if you can be competent while being humbly confident, people will give you the things that you want, the things that you ask for, you will do more business, you will be happier because you can sit and you can look left and you can see rain and clouds,

9:23or you can sit and you can look right and you can see sunshine. You got to pick every day. And that worked. And I did that TV show for 10 years and then three spinoff shows. And now we have our Netflix show. And then I started a company and I just keep, I wake up and I follow my calendar and I go

Theater Roots and Improv

9:36from there. Coming back to sort of being the person you want to be, is that why you got into theater? So you could be somebody else? For sure. Yeah. We moved around a lot when I was a little kid. Um, and I think I never found community because we switched schools so much and the theater kids were nice, you know, they were just nice. And they took me in and for those moments on stage or in those classes, I could pretend to be somebody else, which was a lot easier than being myself.

10:09And then I just liked it, you know, and it was, it was a, it was a, in hindsight, an incredible skill to build given what I do now, like selling isn't acting, but it's the same muscle you are on all day long, but the ability to memorize information was huge for me. I was able to work that part of my brain from when I was a really, really little kid, the ability to talk to people in complete sentences, the ability to breathe with your diaphragm and not breathe through your throat.

10:40So a lot of those skill sets you learn in theater and theater is just how to create a full human. Is that why you make your agents still do improv classes? I used to make them. Now I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend it. Most people are afraid of their own shadow. And especially today where people have grown up with social media, like there's this epidemic where people are no longer afraid of failure because it just seems like that's part of the

11:10job, but they're 100,000% afraid of embarrassment. And that is really scary. Like they're not willing to go out and take a risk or make a fool of themselves or talk to a hundred people and meet five. Like you've got to be okay with being embarrassed. You've got to be okay with people talking poorly about you. You have to be okay with, with bad comments. Like you should not be okay when people stop talking or stop caring. And so, yeah, improv, you know, especially for agents, um, who are shy, who are scared of their own shadow, teaching them to get on stage in front of people that they don't

11:44know, pretend to be a cat on Mars on fire, who speaks English and is looking for its grandmother. I don't know, like some random scenario. Go do that. It's not that hard. If you just try, it's goofy, it's weird. You make fun of yourself. Like those people make more money. If you're willing to embarrass yourself, you make more money every time.

Managing the Thousand Minutes

12:03You have a concept that I loved about a thousand minutes a day. Can you walk me through that? As an independent contractor, you're by yourself every day. You have no boss. You could have coaches and whatever. You have to wake up every day and you have to go make money. And if you don't know what to do with your hours, your minutes, you could use them very, very unwisely. So when I first got into real estate, one of the hardest things I had to figure out is what do I do all day? So when I got into the business, I was like, I got to figure out structure.

12:34I need to blueprint for myself. So I'm going to do it in two ways. One, I have a three-part structure for my day. I'm going to find business, keep business, do business. I'm going to be the CEO, CFO, and COO of my own life. And that's going to be my day. And I'm going to do that within a block of minutes. So you have 1,440 minutes every single day. On average, me, especially before I was married, kids, et cetera, some people have 500 minutes a day to be productive and do their work. Some people have way more. On average, you have 1,000.

13:05You have to treat those 1,000 minutes like money. It's the only way you won't waste it. If you had $1,000 in your pocket and someone took out five and ran away, you wouldn't then say, hey, here's the rest, right? But people do that with their time. You have a bad phone call for five minutes. Someone pisses you off and you give them the rest of those money. You're like, you know what? Here you go. You should take it. And they do that with their time because they don't think about their time as their greatest asset. And so I would wake up and I'd write down, I'm the CEO.

13:37This is so stupid. I'm the CEO of my own bank of time. Today, I have 1,000 fresh dollars and I have to use them wisely. And if they're unused, I get to invest them into tomorrow. If someone ruins them, it's fine. It doesn't mean anything. And it helped me become so much more productive. Our meetings turned into 15 to 30. My days then became basically 15-minute increments. So I could just do 10 times more in one day than anybody else. And it wasn't because I was necessarily doing more.

14:07It's because I was just valuing my time that much greater. I held myself and my time to the highest regard. I held myself in as humble and nice of a way as I possibly can. Like, I never walk into meetings. I'm like, hey, just so you know, I have 14 minutes. Go. Like, I don't do that. That's insane. But what changed in the meetings, for example? Like, so how do you go from having an hour-long meeting to a 15-minute meeting? And like, what is it the tangible things that you did that changed that? Is it no small talk? Is it just business? Is it like, how did that work? Depends on what the meeting is. It depends on what the call to action is going to be and what we're looking to do.

14:39And you'd be surprised when you offer up less time to somebody else. It also means that they get to take less time with you. And most people aren't rude about it. Most people are actually thankful. It doesn't mean you don't have small talk. It means you don't have unnecessary, unproductive, no talk. Small talk is great. Like, you and I, we shot the shit for a few minutes before this started. You know, I'm human, but I also really, really, really, really hate wasting time.

15:12And I don't think anyone else should waste my time. And I refuse to waste anybody else's. And you just get that much more done. Like in 2000, I think it was, maybe it was 18. It wasn't 18. It was a rough year for real estate in New York. Rough. That was the year I think I crossed 800 million in sales that year, which today is a small number. But at that point, and I wasn't the best. I was by far the least connected. But we outsold the next highest sales team by, I think, like $350 million that year,

15:46which is almost a million dollars a day. And I swear to you, it was because my team was a machine and operated with a high value currency of time in a way where everybody else would just go show. They're just selling. They're busy. They're taking their time, which maybe is healthier.

The Art of the Sale

16:02Talk to me about the art of the sale. Like, how does that work? Like, what is involved in that? The negotiation, the positioning, to walk me through that. Well, the best sale is no sale. The art of the sale is that nothing is for sale and I'm not selling you anything. People don't want to be sold, but they love shopping. And so you create real, authentic relationships, even if it's short. So the first thing you do is the two C's. You find something in common, right?

16:33And you give somebody a compliment because you want to disarm them. And people like compliments. Even if they're like, don't sell me, people appreciate it. And then you find something in common. Oftentimes it's the house that you're in or the street that you're on or a job you have or your birthday or your astrological sign, whatever it might be, you know? And then you play the question game. So you never ask a question that someone can say no to. And you just ask questions to let people talk. People, especially adults, especially men, love the sound of their own voice.

17:05And so you ask questions, you let them talk, learn about them, find things that you have in common, and you talk about everything but the sale. We have a closing method called CODO, which is close on day one. And so then the one thing you will do is you'll lay out a certain set of expectations as to this is how we work. This is what's going to happen because you don't want to be in a position where now you've just made a friend forever and you lay out what those next steps are. So you also don't waste your time because a lot of people do like to waste time. And it depends on the asset, depends on the price, depends on location, depends on the interest, the activity, the stage you're setting for people or not setting for people.

17:39Some products sell themselves. They're beautiful. They're well-priced. And the art of that sale is who am I going to sell to? Sometimes they're incredibly overpriced and no one wants it. And you have one showing and it's tomorrow and it's 2.30. And you're Annette Benning in American Beauty and you're, I will sell this house today. And what do you do? And it does come down to experience and selling the lifestyle and the opportunity and the the dream. See, a lot of people who are terrible at sales are trying to sell me the bed and they try

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19:44With these houses, are you selling a lifestyle? Are you selling how you're going to feel in this place? Like, I don't know. Like, I don't sell real estate, so. Everything's a sell, man. You can talk to a pharmacist, right? They're selling high- Well, everybody's in sales. Like, we're all in sales. Yeah. And the first thing we sell is ourself. Always. Because that creates the relationship. It creates trust, confidence. Always. It's always, you know, why me, right? If it could be anybody, why not me? Why not? And then just shoot your shot and try.

The Five Year Follow Up

20:15And so you have to put yourself out there. You have to be totally okay with embarrassment. You have to follow up forever. One of the biggest clients I have, I met him briefly in 2012. And I followed up with him every other week for five years. And he finally responded to me at the end of 2017.

20:30And he was just busy. You can double-click on this follow-up thing, because it's one of the things that you do and you're known for. Like, what is the art of the follow-up? Like, how do you follow up for five years without getting blocked, rejected? Well, listen, I don't follow up with people who say stop, really. I mean, sometimes. But you have three Fs. So it's the art of the three Fs. Follow up, follow through, follow back. So you follow up forever until people buy, die, or they bought something and they don't want to work with you, which is totally fine.

21:01You follow through on everything you say you're going to do. And you follow back with everybody that decided to work with you. And you have to have that process and you have to do it. So he was wealthy and was a potential great client. And he never wrote back. But was this like a quarterly email you'd send him? Hey, is now there our time? Personal note. Personal note every other week. About the market. About a new listing. About a new sale. About an alert that I'd find. One of the big unlocks for me in this process was when Google created Google Alerts.

21:33So you could set up anyone's name, anyone's company, and you would get an email digest once an hour, a half a day, or twice a day, whatever you want, with anyone's name, letting them know. Which would then be a good key indicator for me of like, oh, they just bought a company or they just did this. They just did that. And I never ask anything. Never ask. Never do anything. Just congrats. Crushing it. Super simple. Because at some point in time, maybe, if and when they decide that they're going to do something in real estate, my name will be in their brain. For sure.

22:03Unless they've told me not to. This is not a 100% success ratio. But it is far greater than the not. Yeah. So I followed up with him for five years. Then sold him a place for $16 million. Then $73 million. Then $33 million. So on and so forth. Do you think that people lack the ability to follow up or they just give up? Or is it the follow through? No, dude. Give up is so easy. So easy to give up. Giving up is so easy. Quitting is so easy. Trying is so much harder.

22:34But it's also free. Like, I don't understand why and when people quit. Now, listen, sometimes I forget, you know, and I miss it. Like, we're all fallible. But I want to always make sure that I did my absolute best. And that I'd rather regret the things I did than the things I never tried. And so we try a lot.

The Eight Million Dollar Deal

22:57One of the craziest deals I ever did is this guy that reached out on the phone to potentially buy this place on the Upper West Side. It was 45 West 67th Street, Apartment 15, ABC. And this was in 2011. And he said he wanted to buy it, which was weird because it was just over the phone. And it's not what you do that way. You wanted to make an offer. But I had no one else. And it was like the biggest listing I ever had. And I was broker number five because the seller was difficult. And so by the time she got to me, she had been beaten down a little bit.

23:30We were listed for eight and a half million dollars. He offered eight million dollars. He said he was going to pay cash. I didn't ask him any qualifying questions because I'd never done anything like this before. It was just like this random situation. I told the seller she was ecstatic.

23:45We negotiated. We split the difference, basically. Got the deal done at 8.3. And then he vanished. Totally vanished. Following up on email forever. I was like, all right, that guy was a con artist or something. Or maybe he was drunk. I don't know. And then one day I get a call from the lawyer on the deal. And he's like, I just got a $830,000 wire from the bank of this country that you should probably not do business with. He's like, I'm going to tell you the seller, but I think we're in contract.

24:19Like, what? What do you mean? Like, it's been months. And he just randomly said, yeah. He's like, and I have signature pages that came with God. I don't know. They didn't, they just, okay, great. Take it. Leave it. She signed the contract. We're in contract. Holy shit. I just did an $8.3 million deal in 2011. That's like a hundred million dollars in today's money. Okay. Yeah. And then in New York, you have to close. You have to do what's called a board application. So it's a condo application. Who's the buyer? All the financials. And in New York, they go through it. Like, they want your tax returns, everything.

24:49And he disappeared again. And months and months and months and months and months go by and follow up and follow up. And then I start meeting people and they're like, listen, here's what happens. How long was it between the accepted offer and when he sent the deposit? Like, months. Yeah. Well, what he's probably doing is he probably took a contract out, has everything in writing. What was it originally listed for? And I was like, I think it was originally listed for like 15 million. It's like, oh, it looks like a great deal in America. And he probably went around to a lot of unsuspecting victims and said, come in on this deal with

25:22me for $10,000. Come in on this deal with me for $15,000. I've got this amazing real estate investment and he's probably stealing people's money. I'm like, then why would he, why would they wire? It does. He's like, what do you mean? That's how they wash it. He sends it to you. It clears channels. As long as he is okay and you go through know your customer, KYC, then the deposit will now sit in an attorney's escrow account and he'll let it sit and then he won't close. And eventually he knows all of it or some of it is going to be sent back to him, right?

25:56In the event of a seller default because a seller can't close because he's not going to do the condo application and she's not going to want to go through a lawsuit to fight for the deposit. I was like, so what do I do? It's like, nothing. It's how con artists work. It's just, it's just how it works. You just got conned. Welcome to New York. Like, wait, wait, no, but that's my biggest deal. I'm like, I've been counting the money. What do I do? And I find, I have a friend who pulls international property records and finds his name attached to an address for like a very fancy house in Paris.

26:30I sent him a message saying, I'm actually going to be in Paris tomorrow. If you want to just meet in person, if that would be easier to do the board application. And he writes back for the first time in what must've been three and a half months of following up and gives me a time and a place. I'm either going to go get this done or I'm going to be killed. And I went to the location and he didn't show up and waited and waited and waited. And he finally shows up with a fleet of people.

27:02He said, sorry, I was late. What are you drinking? And he proceeded to make sure that I drank as much tequila as possible. And so at the same time, I'm like, I have to do this. He's a client. I'm doing this deal. Everything's going to be okay. But also like Liam Neeson's not my dad. Like, I don't know what's going to happen here. I got him to sign off on a couple of pages with signature, but he refused to fill anything in. Flew all the way back, submitted the board application completely unfinished. He, uh, randomly I'm in my apartment and I get a message.

27:33Um, that he's in New York and he's ready to close. And it was like Christmas at that moment. And so we, I went up, I told everyone he's here, he's here, he's here. Meet me at the Mandarin Oriental, um, at 80 Columbus circle. I go, I wait, I wait. And eventually it comes down and like, um, eight maybe or nine, again, armored escalades pull up. We get in the car. They're like doing something's going on.

28:0667 streets right over here. I thought we were going to walk. Like it's only six blocks. Um, he's like, no, no, no, no. Don't care. We go to the backside of what is JFK. Um, and I thought he was going to put me in an airplane and fly me somewhere. Um, but I'm pretty sure what happened is there was a newer airplane and he got out just to inspect it because he was buying it. And so the whole reason he was here was because he was picking up a new airplane and then we went back to the city and we closed, um, and he paid cash and I asked him why you did this

28:44to me. And he literally said, um, one night I was drunk and I was on the internet and then you didn't leave me alone and I just felt bad for you. So what are we going to do with this apartment? Turns out he's super real. I think he clears like at that time, man, this is 2011, 2012, like a billion a year. But yeah, that's when I was like, man, New York real estate. And then he's like, now you got to sell it because I don't want it.

29:16It sold later. Yeah. I never used it. It got rented out. It just became a investment. It was insane. Completely crazy. I built an AI version of myself with Hey Jen. What you're about to see in here is my digital avatar. I asked it why some professionals build an audience while most stay invisible. And here's what it said. Hey Shane, the professionals breaking out right now aren't the most talented ones. They're the most visible ones. That's their edge. They show up on video constantly and nobody else can keep the pace.

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30:53That's drinkelement.com slash TKP.

Killing Ego with Honey

30:58How do you negotiate between the egos? There's like an agent ego, there's a buyer ego, and a seller ego, and they're all probably pretty large at like $20 to $100 million sales. You over-communicate all day every day, and you kill bees with honey. You respect everyone and smile all the way to the bank.

31:23Ego kills more deals than anything. Ego kills more careers. Double-click on that. More relationships. People put themselves first all the time. People have much, much, much higher senses of self than the world does, and everyone wants to win. Now, listen, if you're in the NBA Finals, sure, there's going to be a loser. But in most business transactions, you only win if the other side wins too. Like in a real estate sale, unless it's a short sale and you're dealing with the bank, et cetera,

31:55even then, the bank, like they got this off their balance sheet. It is also a win. And so when you are dealing with massive ego, you partner with them. You kudos them to death. You kill them with honey, right? So you're awesome. And you know that if they win, by default, that means you won too. And so you play for the other side to win at all times. And then you get to laugh all the way to the top of the charts and to the bank.

32:29And that's how I've always, always operated. Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies so, so close.

Rock Bottom in 2008

32:37What was the lowest point in your life? Was that the debit card being declined? Or was it something else? I mean, there's so many low points. I have low points every day. No, but I mean, you were crying on the subway and. Yeah. I mean, I guess that was a complete bottom of the barrel before I got into real estate. That was the summer of 2008. It was before the world fell apart, which didn't really have effect on me because I had no money. But I didn't know what to do.

33:08This kind of dream I had for myself that I was going to come to New York City, be an actor. I was going to figure this out. But I vanished in an instant, even though it didn't. It's not like I ran out of money in one day. It was like a slow process. And I was making little bits of money doing random little things here or there. But I was very much like out of sight, out of mind. And so back in those days, if you don't check your bank account, then you don't have to worry. You know, and I think for anyone who's ever not had a lot of money or who's lived kind of paycheck to paycheck, you put stressful things out of sight because it is then out of mind.

33:49It's too painful. Yeah. So you don't, you like literally would not check. You just wouldn't log on and see how much money I had. And I would just roll the dice when I would go shopping. And I went to the Food Emporium on 59th Street. I would used to do all my food shopping on Sundays. And so I would get like chicken, rice, and for breakfast, I would do tofu because I needed protein. Then my card was declined. And there was a really, what I didn't talk about because I just don't like talking negatively about people or situations, is there was like the meanest, meanest Upper East Side mom right behind me who just like, and I don't know what was going on in her life that day.

34:31Everyone has an explanation, but she had no time for me not to have money in that moment. And I think it just like, it was, it was like gasoline on top of a fire. And so I didn't know what to do. And so I just left. I just walked away. And yeah, that was, that was a hold the tears back moment, crying in the subway. I just want to go home. Did you call anybody? Yes. After that, I called my mom. Um, and they just said what any parents would do.

35:03Like New York is insane. We told you not to move there with no job. Um, come home. It's time to come home, which listen, I'm super fortunate and lucky that I do have parents. I have brothers. I have sisters. I'm wasn't going to be homeless. I could go to any of them, but I was very, very focused on making something for myself and doing this on my own. And I just took it very personally that I completely failed and hit the bottom and that I had no choice but to come home.

35:35Um, and then the next call that I made, um, was to my friend, Jason, who I went to school with, who was in real estate, who was also an actor, but he got into real estate first. Um, and he said, just get your real estate license and he's like, I'll help you out and we'll share clients and you're going to make money and it's going to be totally fine. And that is literally what happened. And the blessing on this whole thing was that the world fell apart like two weeks later. Like I made rent on September 1st and two weeks after that, the entire world collapsed.

36:10Um, and I had no idea what that meant because I was, dude, I was like, you know, playing bushes in free theater in the West side highway. Like I wasn't focused on the state of global economic turmoil. Um, and everyone got out of the business and the best analogy I can give you, um, because everyone in real estate got out because the world just ever, you couldn't get a loan. No one could buy. It was a complete disaster. Um, I was like just this moron who didn't really think much of it and me and Jason were like in Forrest Gump and Lieutenant Dan on that ship when everybody else bailed in the storm, all their ships were destroyed and the two of us were just like, okay, we'll just do this.

37:02Just, I mean, the marketplace had been decimated in terms of, in terms of our debt, in terms of our direct competition. And we were just, we were just, I just learned how to do deals real fast. Meet people at the corner of 31st and Broadway, meet them at the Starbucks at the corner of 49th and Madison. You put keys in your pocket, you have 10 apartments to show, you just hustle and you wear holes for your shoes, you know? And that's, that's, that's what I did. And I just moved really, really quickly. And that first year was rough. I made nine grand and I supplemented it with, like I said, odd jobs here and there and, you know, hand modeling and stuff.

37:35And that paid my bills. That's a crazy story. I don't think it is that crazy. Did your mindset change at all, like through that? Or did you, like the mindset was always there and? There is definitely a resilience, that's for sure. That period of my life, like from the end of 2008, really to early 2010, when the millionaire listing audition happened, was just pure living by the quote, the only way out is through.

38:07And I just knew that every day, if I take it one day at a time, the only way out of how I feel, the only way out of this circumstance, of the situation, is just to go through it. It's not even to go with it. It's not to go against it. It is to barrel the buck through it. And that is how I've now operated my entire life.

Building a Distribution Machine

38:29At what point did you realize that like one of the real businesses you're in is not necessarily real estate? It's like getting and sustaining attention and turning people into clients. Millionaire Listing came out and I was waiting for the phone to ring and it didn't ring because no one picks up the phone and calls the people they see on TV. But I saw very, very quickly the power of content to commerce. And on Twitter, this is pre-Instagram. Instagram comes out in 2013. And on Facebook, I saw like early, early days of social growth.

39:05I'm in community and it was other people in real estate, buyers and sellers. And I was just like, okay, wait a minute. There's a, there's a there there, but it wasn't obvious because real estate's incredibly expensive. So it's not like selling, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, a hundred dollar goods. And we're selling 500,000 to $20 million homes. You're not really selling those on Instagram. And, uh, but I saw that community early on. I was like, man, it'd be awesome if I could just do this even more because the more people who know what I sell, the better.

39:40And then I can generate lead flow in my sleep because I can create my reality. And then the perception of my reality every day. And I can brand and expand, brand and expand. And so in 2013, I kind of cut my day up into build brand, expand my business sales and doing the work. And then Instagram came out, man, and it totally changed the game because it was a visual medium, which is my world. It was the first time that that type of like asset.

40:14So the asset of a beautiful home really was, um, visually democratized in the palm of everyone's hand. It's just never happened before. So, and I had this following that it was building from the benefit of being on TV and that show would come out every year. And so I just said, I'm going to lean in as hard as possible to this. And then a couple of years later, we said, okay, reality TV just takes a long time because you shoot and it comes out next year.

40:44By then, all the properties I have are sold. How can I just do this faster? Yeah. And Joe Loresca, who worked with me at the time, he now runs a creative agency called Noise. Um, and a couple of people who basically formed the basis of what became Serhant Media Group, which is now Serhant Studio. Uh, we're like, we're going to double down on YouTube. And if I can be first to market to do that and capture consumer mindshare, then I can turn that into a brand and that brand can become a business.

41:15And to your point, the most valuable asset in any business is distribution. You can have the greatest product of all time. If no one knows about it and no one buys it, you have an unknown product that does not sell. And that is a bankrupt business. And so I got super lucky, I think, um, riding the backs of early Instagram and early YouTube to build a brand built on personality, but on content to community to commerce for real estate.

41:45And it got to the point where every seller I worked with, every developer we worked with was writing it into our exclusive agreements in like 2015, 16, 17, you know, we're working with billionaires, you know, and, and some of the biggest developers in New York and, and other markets that we were in. And in these, you know, standard old school listing agreements, they were writing in addendums that Ryan will post property tours of our building on his personal YouTube and we will give you the building deal. Great. And we just, and we just had a distribution funnel, we still do, and we have a distribution funnel for real estate that like you just couldn't buy because it is a concentrated audience.

42:23When you buy, you know, when you buy advertising, right, you are pushing your message onto, onto people. And that's a push message. And you have to do that over and over and over and over and over and over before people pay attention. Social and the power of PR is pull. And so we were able to pull people into our stories day in and day out. We do that now. We do that now, obviously at a much, much, much more massive scale. If I give you an undercover identity and dropped you off in a different city, took away your phone and all your contacts and told you to build a brand, a personal brand, what would you do?

42:59Do I have a phone? Yeah, you have a phone, but you can't talk to anybody you know. Ah, easy. All I would do all day long is interview small business owners in exchange for me making the content. I would do it on my phone and I would go to every dry cleaner, every coffee shop, anyone who owns a small business, and I would become the mayor of that town publicly. I would then, if I had a few dollars, get a laptop and I would create a website called, I don't know, give me a town.

43:31Georgetown. Georgetown called Going to Georgetown, Growing Up Georgetown. I would lean hard into alliteration because it's easier for people to remember. I would buy one of those websites on GoDaddy or something like that, super cheap. And I would build a website about that town and I would run not just SEO anymore, but now also against LLMs to make sure that when people are searching that town to visit, where to get brunch, where to get lunch, where to get dinner, who to hire for movers, where to do your dry cleaning, who dog walks.

44:03My website would be 100% catered towards all my reviews and all my interviews with all those people with a direct call to action. And then I would turn that into a real estate business from there. And people want to work with people who know their stuff. And that is also the best way to get ingrained into a community, to be pro-community. Give, give, give, give, give, give, ask. Wait, you call that, I think I remember that it was hook them, help them, ask them?

44:35Yeah. Is that the, yeah. Can you explain that to me? Yeah. Hook them, help them, ask them.

44:42Listen, like I, you know, we train salespeople all over the world through sellit.com. You know, we have upwards of 60,000 salespeople now in 133 countries that train with us that are in app all day, every day. We also do a lot of B2B. And so we do a lot of trainings. And so it's easy for me to say, this is what I would do, et cetera. But people want frameworks. They want blueprint. They want strategy. And so teaching people, you don't get to make an ask to any new person you meet until first you hook them, meaning you find something in common and a reason to know you.

45:15If you are just a salesperson, if you're just there to be a human being, guess what? There's 8 billion of you. Everyone's got friends. They don't need you. But people hate being sold and they love shopping with friends. So how do you hook them to becoming a relationship? And how do you do that authentically, right? How do you make them a part of your orbit and how do you become a part of their sphere? Then you help them with something that has nothing to do with you, whether it's an introduction to somebody, a discount, a code. Hey, I got you tickets to that restaurant. I know the owner. And then once you do that, right, you've built trust.

45:47Then and only then can you go in and make any ask. And the ask doesn't ever, you don't ever have to make an ask. But it's a way and a framework for people to generate relationships, especially, man, now. Like, kids have no idea how to talk. They have no idea how to talk. They have no idea how to create relationships. They live most of their day in their phones. It is incredibly, it's frustrating, but, you know, I get it. And it's a good blueprint to get them out of their own shadow and kind of more comfortable in their own skin for how to build long-lasting customer relationships.

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Never Satisfied

47:38There's a moment in season two of Owning Manhattan that I want to talk about for a second. You're in Miami at the Mercedes-Benz sales event. And your wife comes up to you and says, you used to be happy. And you're never satisfied anymore. You want to talk about that? Yeah. Talk to me. I mean, this is a common trait amongst all of our guests, amongst incredibly successful people,

48:12is they're pleased but never satisfied. And they're driven to keep going, and there's no amount of enough that's enough because there's always a new challenge. There's always a new, it's like the very thing that makes you successful is also super hard on the people closest to you. Oh, for sure. I think that, unfortunately, in business, if you're not growing, you're dying. That's it. There is no successful business that does not grow, unless it is family owned, and it's a lifestyle business.

48:47If you're building a lifestyle business, and you have a fixed income, and that's fine, that's what you want to do, then that's great. You can go do that, by all means. That sounds really nice. Actually, your lifestyle will never increase. Expenses will always increase. Taxes will always increase. The cost of goods sold will always increase, as far as I know. To build a successful business, you have to grow. And growth is also happiness, right? Change is happiness.

49:17We are connected to growth. It is part of our DNA. We have evolved to want, need, and yearn for more. And the people who don't feel that way, I think, are awesome and incredible. And I wish them the greatest life of all time. But for a lot of us, we have to continue to push boundaries to do more tomorrow than we did yesterday, even if it's 1% more. And, you know, I had reached the top of, like, the real estate sales charts.

49:48Like, my last year as a real estate agent, fully as an agent, in 2019, we crossed a billion dollars in sales for the year.

49:57You know, I think my commissions at that point, I think it was like $22 million for the year. And it's like, okay, what am I going to do now? I got to, what's my next mountain? What's my next thing? Okay, I did the agent thing. I know how to build teams. I know how to build sales. I know how to create a distribution funnel, unlike anything anyone has ever created in this industry before. Let's go to zero. Let's go from being number one to being dead last. I'm just using the same tools and resources and know-how that I created to build the team.

50:28So I started the company in 2020 like a psychopath in the middle of COVID while we were building our house and we had a nine-month-old all at the same time. And the market was decimated. The Dow drops 10,000 points. Like, we're watching death clickers on TV. I'm like, I had a day of, do I do this? Do I still go through? And again, the same way when my card was declined and I called my parents as to what to do. And they said, come home. I called them and said, what do I do? They said, look at what everyone much smarter and more successful than you is doing.

51:03They're pulling back. This is unprecedented. This is an incredibly terrifying time. People are laying people off. People are furloughing. Do not go and start your own company. And like, when people tell me not to do something, like, man, if you're going to be so strong to the left, I think I'm going to go. I think I'm going to do it. If they had encouraged me, I don't know if I'd be here. Because it would have felt weird.

51:35It would have felt too comfortable. It would have been like, all right, if you think I should, then I guess. I don't know. It seems like a lot of work. But because everyone was so anti-starting business, I just went so hard. And it was also the only time, probably in my lifetime, that I'll ever get the spring market off because the world shut down. And so we got to build a business under the cover of darkness, and we got to come out to fanfare, and people just came in droves because the market had been decimated for a very short period of time, unlike 2008, which took like four years to come back pretty quickly.

52:09Even though markets kind of returned after eight months, this one was relatively pretty fast, and we just moved really, really fast, as fast as we possibly could. Then it went almost parabolic. And we were in the right place at the exact right time. Where does that chip on your shoulder come from? I don't know, man. I have three sisters. I have two brothers. I was last to be picked on every sports team. I was chubby, covered in rash acne growing up. I think counted out, kind of outcast-y.

52:40Like, I would write, I would do creative fiction, sitting in my closet, writing stories and illustrating them for like years. My mom still has them. I think your past explains you, but it does not excuse you. And so I do make an active effort every day not to let kind of how I was brought up and everything in my past be an excuse for behavior, because I meet a lot of people who do.

53:13Double-click on that. Tell me more. I mean, how many people have you met who are just complete assholes and who are dicks and who are rude and they don't value your time? You know, we talked about time. And then they'll tell you like, oh, well, you know, what I've gone through. Like, no, no, no, dude. That explains why you are the resilient, tough human being you are today. It does not, I can excuse you from being an asshole. And so I think it's important. I think it's important for you to explain why.

53:43Like, why do I focus so much on time? Why do I focus so much on giving back to others? Why do I focus so much on the things that I do? But it doesn't excuse behavior. Work incredibly hard. Be incredibly nice. And endurance for the win. Like, everybody else will tap out. And that's what's happened, man. Like, I, that's what's happened in my business now. Like, even in the real estate business today, I'm watching firm after firm after firm go down and get consolidated. You know, we have opportunities to buy companies right now.

54:14And I just, I like, we pull up in the hood. Like, you know, publicly, these companies are incredible. They're amazing. They're great. And then you look at it and you're like, the underlying economics of your business don't work. And you're losing money hand over fist. And it's not like you're losing money to grow. You're losing money because you're losing money.

54:31I can work something out with you. But you have to be willing to fix the underlying economics. But the ego and I think just the raw unintelligence blocks a lot of people. And so they'd rather fall on their sword than continue to fight another day, which is fine by me. And I'll let that happen. What does success look like for you? I mean, I think about micro success and macro success. So, like, this is a successful conversation, I think.

55:00Big picture success, I think, is happy legacy. You know, it's leaving something behind. And whether that's just with my daughter or with the people that I've been able to help at work, I think I divide success up that way. So, on the personal side, it's family and legacy and leaving the world in a better place maybe than they found it and giving them opportunities that they otherwise wouldn't. And at work, you know, you asked me about my chip on my shoulder, which I think also could rub people off the wrong way because it might feel incredibly ambitious.

55:40But I think if, like, you really came and saw how many other people win when I win to the thousandths of percent, you'd understand that, like, it's not ambition. It's not a chip. It is pure, brutal responsibility. And I think I have a responsibility now to others, those that I work with directly and those that I work with and employ indirectly.

56:10And I don't want to waste the opportunity. I don't want to waste the opportunity.