Full transcript: Ryan Serhant on London Real
3:21 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Ryan Serhant, the American real estate broker, broadcaster and author. In 2006 you moved to New York City to become an actor, getting your real estate license just to make ends meet. By 2012 you were cast in the hit series Million Dollar Listing New York, which follows the lives of three luxury real estate agents over eight seasons.
3:40 You also start on the spin-off series Sell It Like Serhant and regularly appear on CNN, CNBC in the Today Show. You sold over 1.6 billion dollars where the real estate in the last two years, and your book Sell It Like Serhant teaches the fundamentals of selling anything to anyone.
3:53 Brian Rose: Ryan, welcome to London Real in New York City.
3:56 Ryan Serhant: Yeah, thanks for having me. On Canal Street, right?
3:58 Brian Rose: Crazy, right? There might be some horns and stuff going in the background, you know, look, you got a really incredible story. I’d love to get into it. I guess the first thing I wanted to ask you was when you came to New York in 2006, did you know you were gonna make it no matter what was it like, “I’m not leaving the county, man, on a stretcher”? Or did that come over time, that kind of killer instinct.
4:17 Ryan Serhant: I think it came over time. You know, like, I came to New York because I knew I didn’t want to pass up opportunity, and I knew life was short, and I’d always had this acting bug. It’s the only thing I was ever kind of good at. It’s the only thing I’ve ever really liked. I was so nervous to just go get a regular job or go to grad school or just do something because I thought that’s what I supposed to do, and then you know, when I’m like 40 or 50 or 60, then be upset that I never tried it, and then what I do, and by then I’d be married with kids, have responsibilities, all that, and I would never do it, you know, like, what’s that movie?
4:51 There’s a George Clooney movie, I think it’s called Up in the Air, where he’s a guy that goes around the world and fires people, and he’s got that one line. It’s like, how much did they pay you to give up your dreams, you know? And it’s amazing scene with him and J.K. Simmons, and he’s a camera order wise, but it was either is some hourly wage or something to cover his bills, and he’s like, “I was gonna be a chef, but now I’m a CPA, and you know, if you don’t love numbers, being a CPA must suck.”
5:17 So I think once I kind of got into the city and started really hustling. At that point, a year or two into it, was like, I, if the acting thing doesn’t work out, I just don’t to leave New York because New York is a city where, like, literally anything can happen. And if I’m gonna do something with my life, it’s gonna happen here versus anywhere else right now.
5:35 Brian Rose: Anything can happen here, but it’s also, you know, I used to live here for about four years in the ’90s, and walking around here it’s a different vibe than London.
5:43 It’s different 5:00 in LA. It really feels like it’s kind of kill or be killed. It feels like no one’s gonna give you a hug. There’s no puppy dogs. There’s no unicorns.
5:51 No friends here. There’s no friends, but you like that as well, because it means also you can win if you perform.
5:57 Ryan Serhant: Yeah, listen, man, I was doing a deal at 10:30 p.m. in the office last night, and everybody I need on that deal was also in the office, also calling me back. If there are dinners, they were stepping out like people in New York who are successful, or on the same rhythm, and they just get up and go, and that’s no matter what that step. That’s the way that I was raised, you know?
6:15 Like, I’ve been to London, you know. I’ve been to other cities, and it’s, “Well, wait till 9:00 a.m. tomorrow,” like that just doesn’t work for me. Life is too short. I Life is too short to wait till tomorrow. Like, I got to get things done now.
6:30 Well, also, like, savoring up the moments. I don’t want to sound like a crazy person, but you know, that deal last night was also predicated on moving things really, really quickly, and had attorneys not been able to pick up the phone or make things move or kind of you know, been at dinner with their wives, like the deal wouldn’t have gotten done.
6:47 Brian Rose: What do people not know about the inside of what you do every day, as far as the high-ticket real estate market, like, what would people be surprised to learn?
6:55 Those cops are coming for you now if you’re here. I hope those Red Sox… but like, what’s something that we’d be surprised to learn, and what’s something that’s not what we would typically assume? How about me and the business you do and the clients you deal with.
7:10 Ryan Serhant: Said the business is an insane amount of work. It’s probably not as customer-facing as people think.
7:16 I think when you watch the shows and watch us on YouTube and everything, it’s very visual, very personal, but I spend, like, you’ve got to be willing to grind the office hours. Like I get, and I was just telling Ollie is if he came up here. Like I get every day, Monday through Friday anyway, between 9:00 and 11:00, that better for me. That’s not spam. All right, spam is a separate box.
7:40 I have an email assistant who helps me with the emails right? I’ve got three other assistants who help me just move life forward, and all of it is being incredibly disciplined with the work. So you have to also be able to have the discipline to grind in front of a computer and answer email in real time, while also turning on that personality and being customer-facing when they’re in front of you.
8:02 Brian Rose: Does that acting background help you? Are you playing the role of your life now?
8:06 Ryan Serhant: A hundred percent. Yeah. Okay, the acting background, the ability to improvise, you know, in kind of ebb and flow with people’s personalities, to be able to figure out how I’m gonna answer someone’s question with the way they need me to answer it. You know, there’s a lot of people who are so stubborn with their own personalities. They just will never be as successful as they could be if they were to kind of work within the idea of Inception, I guess.
8:32 You know, like, every deal I do, it’s about making it the other person’s idea, and you can only do that if you know how to listen to respond instead of listening to reply.
8:41 Brian Rose: Okay, you once said you could have negotiate with someone’s emotions but not with their bank account. Yeah, what do you mean by that?
8:48 Ryan Serhant: I mean, if someone walks in the door and they only have a hundred bucks in their wallet, yeah, you can go bar a little bit, but like, I can’t change how much money they make.
8:57 I can’t change how much money they have in the bank or how much they can get pre-approved for. And alone, unless they rob a bank, like I can’t negotiate with how much money they have. How much money they wanna spend is totally different. Manal, that’s all here and everybody has different reasons. Some, it’s about making other people happy.
9:16 Someone’s about ego, so much just about feeling like they won, and they got a good deal. Everyone’s a little bit different, and so you negotiate the emotions that are attached to the wallet versus just negotiating with the wallet.
9:29 Brian Rose: Okay, so ultimately they feel good when they buy, but that could be six different reasons or ten different reasons, always. Okay, and you have to be able to listen to them and sell them something to where they walk out with a great feeling.
9:42 Ryan Serhant: Yeah, and you have to, you know, on both sides of any deal you have to literally write down, for a long time. I would actually write it down. I carry a Moleskine all the time, it’s like purple Moleskine. I write notes on, and you have to figure out what everyone’s fears are. So if you’re a buyer, if you don’t get this apartment, what happens?
10:01 If you’re fine with it, then that’s not really a fear, but maybe it’s because your lease is coming up in October. You don’t know what to do. That’s a fear that you can press on for people, right? To kind of create a market and create urgency for them. If a seller is being super stubborn and they don’t want to sell below their number because it is that or the other.
10:18 What is the seller’s fear? Maybe the seller’s fear is, you know, they’re already in contract on their next place and they’re stubborn about this price, but they need the money to buy the next place or whatever the reason is. You just write them down, and you very slowly gently always press back to the fears to get your deal done.
10:37 Brian Rose: And Manhattan is probably the strangest market in the world, where this one might spend a hundred million dollars on a few-bedroom apartment in one area, you know, but wouldn’t spend a fraction of that, maybe, here on Canal Street.
10:50 And then you’ve got weird motivations. You’ve got the Wall Street guys, maybe the media guys. I mean, maybe the people that are just super rich and want to invest. So there’s a lot of weird quirkiness going on, and you have to try to identify what those motivations are.
11:04 Ryan Serhant: Yeah, I mean, listen, New York is similar to London, I think, in that way.
11:08 That we don’t just have one buyer pool. We’re not like LA. We’re not just governed by the entertainment industry. I could sell an apartment in New York to anybody: finance, tech, entertainment, authors, journeys, you know. Someone from Russia, someone from South America, someone from Cape Town, South Africa, like, it doesn’t matter because New York is this little rock that everyone knows, that no matter what, is a relatively safe real estate investment because it’s always liquid, you know.
11:37 What you can’t say for a lot of other places, and London has the same kind of eclectic client base. You’ve got people from all over the world buying up London, you know. They’re not just tied to one specific industry, and London has huge sales, 200 million for some house Danzig 10 or wherever. These Till’s have done, like, it’s nuts but then you go to the town over or the neighbourhood over, and same sort of thing. They won’t pay, they won’t pay more than a million pounds for that place.
12:03 Brian Rose: Will you ever sell in London?
12:05 Ryan Serhant: No, the brokerage business is so different in London, right? The commissions are lower. The situations with the brokerage companies are different. Most people, agents, are salaried, and it’s a very, very small amount, and you’re not incentivized to work with buyers, you know, in most of Europe anyway.
12:24 And I think it ends up hurting the market, you know. Like, we are, I’m incentivized whether I’m working with the seller or a buyer, and we’re incentivized to get deals done, which is why so many deals get done here. And if I wasn’t incentivized. Like, I would be home last night. I wouldn’t be doing that deal.
12:42 And the wife and a baby, I’ll see you at 9:00 a.m.
12:44 Brian Rose: All right. Some beauty of capitalism in that sense. Good things get a free enterprise and free markets and, like, you can’t penalize people for wanting to work hard. And if you’re not cool with it, then move or don’t do it.
12:55 Like, everything’s nobody’s father. Yeah.
12:57 Brian Rose: What do you think people are fascinated with? Your story? Why do people love the TV show, your, your vlogging channel, all that stuff.
13:04 Is it the fact that they saw you hustle and win? Is it that you open up a lot of possibilities? Like, what do you think it is? I know it’s different audiences, right? Cable’s older, YouTube’s younger.
13:15 Ryan Serhant: Yeah, an Instagram is totally different to every. It’s why I try to be in as many places as I can because it’s all a different, like you said, a different group, a different target market for me. I think that. I think, well, one, a lot of what I do is crazy real estate, so people like seeing the real estate porn aspect of it. Yeah, so, familiar.
13:36 Our listing, and a lot of us stuff, like our property tours on YouTube like, those are always the most viewed, because people just like seeing the crazy real estate. And then my story-wise, I think it’s from what I’ve heard from people anyway, you know? Hey, I wasn’t born into this, right? I was born in Houston, Texas, on a mattress in a house. Like, I moved around eight times, at four, fourth grade.
13:59 I grew up outside Boston. I went to college upstate New York, bombed on the LSATs to get into law school, didn’t know what to do. A little money saved, moved to New York to be an actor. I played a clock in a play in a basement. Like, I think people can relate to not having, like, a golden parachute or kind of been funded by somebody else and so I think my story is very much, like, listen, if you’re determined and you can work incredibly hard, just, just do it and just don’t give up, right?
14:32 It’s about consistency more than anything.
14:34 Brian Rose: And you like real estate because you weren’t being turned away based on your looks and your age and your gray hair, and there’s, like, meritocracy-based. Yeah, which I guess acting in a weird way prepared you to really embrace that. I mean, some people would be like, oh, yeah it’s not so special, but you know, it actually really is.
14:51 Ryan Serhant: Yeah, man.
14:52 I mean, the real estate brokerage business is a meritocracy, right? Which is a very, very healthy form of governing because it’s all dependent upon your ability to do good work or not. And I eat what I kill. I don’t, no one pays me a salary. I pay everyone else salaries.
15:10 Like, I, and my income can go up or go down, or I could have a good year or a bad year, and I just have to try to diversify as much as I possibly can. But yeah, you know, the acting business is, we got ambulances outside. It’s good, this is New York. It is, um, you know, the acting business is very, very personal, like you said. It’s about your face, about your height, you know, your voice, you know, and it’s hard to control all of that.
15:35 And the real estate business, you know, if I show you a good deal, you’re gonna buy it even if you don’t like my face, my hair.
15:43 Brian Rose: And you started out like walking up to pregnant women in Starbucks, and saying, “Hey, probably need more space?” I mean, because no one wants to talk to you.
15:53 Ryan Serhant: No, I didn’t. Like, I’m not from here.
15:55 No one told me what to do. I started at a brokerage, and they were like, post ads on Craigslist meet people, rent apartments. Like, that was the training. So everything else that I’ve done, I’ve had to invent and figure out I’ve added, like, Google, big companies and big brokers, and look at how they run their business. I would write notes down and I take the best that worked for me, and I’d leave the rest.
16:18 Yeah, okay. I’m just trying to find people who wanted to buy or rent or sell apartments, and an easy target in New York City, where pregnant women on the Upper East Side who probably needed more space. And what do people love more than a compliment? So to say you look beautiful, great. I’m a real estate agent, do you need a second bedroom?
16:37 Brian Rose: This is kind of like a weird opening line but it works, works. You tell a pregnant woman she’s beautiful, which is smart F, and then ask if they need more space, and then give her card, and then you move on, right? And you got business from that?
16:49 Ryan Serhant: Yeah, not to start anyway. Yeah, I find people coming out of Saks Fifth Avenue with shopping bags, and if they had more than two shopping bags, I, in my mind, is like, you can afford apartment.
16:59 And I try to meet people that way too,
17:01 Brian Rose: but New Yorkers don’t like being chatted up on the street, do they? You do it any night, really? Okay, really.
17:07 Ryan Serhant: But a cue coming out of Saks Fifth Avenue, mostly wasn’t, New Yorkers will see foreigners, and in Starbucks, like, listen, they want their latte you know, I would get them in line. And so what I’m gonna do is step out of line, not talk to me I’m also not crazy, and I wouldn’t waste anybody’s time, and I’d be super quick, super short, and then if I could get their information, I would follow up with them.
17:27 And it’s really the secret sauce, right? The power of good, valuable follow up.
17:31 Brian Rose: Yeah, you cover that in the book. I want, yeah, some of that today. And you also join multiple gyms, and yeah, just start the conversation.
17:38 Brian Rose: And this was all you, though. You didn’t read a book how to do this? You’re just thinking that.
17:42 Ryan Serhant: No, I was told to join the synagogue. This is kind of New York, by the way.
17:45 Brian Rose: Apparently, in LA you go to AAA? Yeah, all the deeds you’ve make, all the money. Exactly, because you’re getting people who need to. Yeah they want to like get their new demons, you know.
17:54 Ryan Serhant: But here, like, I’m not Jewish.
17:55 I’m not overly religious. I was gonna go to church and try to meet people, and so the only thing I did is, it went to work and I go to the gym in the mornings or at night. And you want to try to find, when selling anything, you want to find people who have things in common with you. That’s why so many, you know, kind of community groups stick together, because they all have that thing in common. I think I had in common with anybody there.
18:18 Wasn’t like a Texas Anonymous, for everyone who lives in, you know, lived in Texas and moved to New York, go to the gym, and I would just talk to people there. So between that, talking to pregnant women and talking to foreigners coming out of Saks Fifth Avenue who had more than two shopping bags. That’s how I started my career.
18:34 Brian Rose: And your first year in real estate, you made $9,000? Yeah, like 90, 100?
18:38 Ryan Serhant: Yeah, I was tough, 50, 100.
18:40 Brian Rose: So you can’t live on that in New York?
18:42 Ryan Serhant: No by Bert, almost brutal. Oh, listen, I, I really hate it when people come to me and say they need to make a certain amount of money, otherwise they just can’t afford to live here. Like, I made it work.
18:54 You don’t need to live in a tower, you know. You can live in a shitty terrible apartment and have six roommates, pay 400 bucks a month and deal with the rats and the cockroaches. Eat ramen, eat tofu. If you want it bad enough, you will figure it out. So anyone, and people tell me all the time, especially younger agents, you know, Millennials and Gen Z’s, who just drive me crazy.
19:15 We’re like, well, yeah, but I can’t afford to live there, it’s just too expensive, like, too expensive for your tastes, pretty, the way you want to live, the way you want to show yourself off on Instagram or, or what is it? And they can never answer the question. Like, oh, well, it’s not safe. Oh my god, I did it you know, if you want it bad enough, you will make it happen.
19:35 Brian Rose: Do people find it hard to picture you scraping by, you know, going to Koreatown, you know, I me ’cause I don’t, you know, they see your lavish lifestyle.
19:43 It’s hard to picture you, you know, in a place with rats?
19:46 Ryan Serhant: Yeah. I, I don’t know. I guess so. I think so.
19:49 That’s why. In the book, you know, I talked about it a lot at the beginning, because I wanted to kind of like break down that barrier of what people assume of me when they see me on TV and, and the vlogs, and and all that stuff, that, like, this wasn’t, you know, I figured it out from the ground up. I’m still trying to figure it out today, and I still go up against real estate agents that are born here that have amazing connections that I don’t have, and I lose deals to them all the time, right?
20:13 You know, and it just fuels the fire for me to do even more.
20:16 Brian Rose: You mentioned Millennials and Gen X. Your kind of Gen X, right?
20:19 Ryan Serhant: I’m a millennial. Your millennial for you, just like, it off the Millennials.
20:22 Brian Rose: Do they get a bad rap? Or is it, you know, be honest, there’s there’s an apathy to younger generations, or they just don’t care, or they care about things that they shouldn’t care about, you know.
20:37 Ryan Serhant: And I think that there is a lack of hard work, because they didn’t have the baby boomer parents and the generations before them who literally had to, like, sew shoes to make a living, you know? Like our, like my kids. I’m not gonna have those stories.
20:56 Like, I’ve got my story, but they’re not gonna grow up in that lifestyle, you know? Like people have it so, it’s dude, so it is what it is. I mean, people have so many different ways of making and raising families that, like, all those old school stories, have walk-in, 5 miles to get the bus, and to do that or gone? Yeah, you know, our stories now are gonna be like, I did wait 10 minutes for my Uber you don’t know what it was like back in the day. Like, is that really gonna motivate the next generation, is to work their ass off.
21:25 Brian Rose: Uh-huh. Yeah, I worry about that too. Was your dad a big part of teaching you the value of money and hard work? I mean, there must have come from somewhere.
21:33 Ryan Serhant: Yeah, I think him at the beginning of the book.
21:35 I resented a lot of the way that he raised me when I was growing up, because it sucked, you know it was all discipline and structure, right? It was the power of, like, the minute, the hour, and the power of the dollar. I had to write an essay, wants, on the importance of not being lazy, because I didn’t hang up my jacket the right way. Like, you know, he really, really cracked a whip, and I am incredibly grateful for it now. Now but at the time it sucked.
22:03 I got it. We didn’t. I wasn’t on to play video games. I wasn’t allowed to like, I had curfews when my pan where my friends didn’t have curfews. Like, we had, every single night at dinner, I had to sit down and walk my dad through my day, and what I learned, and what I’m gonna do better, the next day.
22:19 Like, since I was eight? Wow, right? Sundays I always, when I went to college, I had to call him and walk him through what I learned from the week, and I was gonna do the next week, to the point where I still do it today, because it’s weird not to do it, and I do think it helps me, like, think about my business as a whole movement that way. And like, so now I probably annoy my dad, calling him all the time. He’s like, you know, I already raised you, you go off and leave me alone.
22:39 But it’s pretty helpful. But I do. Yeah, for sure. I credit him a lot.
22:43 Brian Rose: So your structure and discipline came from somewhere?
22:46 I mean, a lot of it you discovered, but a lot of it was put in by him.
22:50 Ryan Serhant: Yeah, I mean, when I first moved here and I first lived in Koreatown and I had, I had two roommates, one to clear, both paralegals, and they were gonna have group brutal hours, and they were gonna go to law school, and I was like the actor, you know. I had no job you know, prospects. It was just wake up and go see if I can audition somewhere, and he told me, it’s like listen, if you want to make this work for yourself, you have to wake up before they do and go to bed after they do.
23:15 All right, use them as guidance for how hard you work. No day you should usually, until 10, and I think he was nervous, because if I didn’t have structure, I’m living in New York City, no boss, no clock to punch in and punch out. What am I going to do? And so it freaked me out. I also did have a clock.
23:31 Like, if I only had so much money to live here, and unless I figured out a way to make money I gotta have to leave.
23:36 Brian Rose: Tell me about the show. How do you get on a show when you’re brokering deals in Long Island City, and you’re telling you the best hooker in the world? Yeah, is that your alter ego you’re channeling, or at,
23:46 Ryan Serhant: no, it’s kind of what we were talking about, right? The power of improv.
23:49 Like, I, I, you know, you have to know how to read people, and you have to know what they want from you, and you either have to give it to them or you don’t, you know. And at that time, in 2010, okay, I didn’t have anything, and so I went to an open casting call and Times Square with 3,000 real estate agents, and March of 2010, and we all had 30 seconds in front of a camera, and I told them what they wanted to hear. You know, the greatest real estate agent in the history of the world, really f***ing yes.
24:16 Okay, move on to the next one. I think a lot of other people went and sat down, like, oh, I don’t know. I mean, I told this last year and think if you don’t have the confidence, then, but know why, when I work with you, and then I had to figure it out, right? Then I had to go figure out how it’s gonna be the greatest real estate agent in the world. It’s like a very stressful time in my life.
24:35 Brian Rose: You said that accountability, though, is what built you. Like, being on, TV and having to do what you say, or watching people really watch you. Clothes are not clothes. Yeah, and even on your YouTube channel, you’re saying that that’s a view. I have heard you say that.
24:49 That’s made you step up over and over again. Yeah, man. The fear of failure, the fear of… is that drive you?
24:55 Ryan Serhant: It drives me. Yeah, for sure.
24:56 Sincerely, yeah the fact of being publicly shamed. I mean, like, so I got on the show, and then it was now you have to be good, because they’re gonna film you for a year doing your job. So if you suck at your job, 25 million people are gonna watch you suck at your job. Don’t do that. And so it was stressful.
25:17 I knew I, and so I don’t want to get things that I couldn’t sell, and everything, you know, that we want to show on the show, I have to be big and expensive, crazy, and that’s really, really hard to sell. So it was, it was a lot. But I, but it really forced me to push even harder, you know, to pick up the phone even more. Like it said, amazing, what happens when you, you know, you flip that switch in your brain. It’s like people who, you know, when they, like, you know, if they’re going on vacation next week, you work a little bit harder this week because you know, you have vacation coming up, but nothing has really changed.
25:50 Like, it’s still Tuesday and raining outside, and you’re working harder because in your mind you’re excited about next Tuesday. So why can’t we figure out ways to do that all the time and the show was a big way to force myself to do that. So the [expletive] tomorrow I gotta film a scene. I’m gonna figure out how to sell it. I gotta call these buyers right now, whereas today, like, I really have to sit here and call these people.
26:14 No, no, figure out a way to sell it.
26:16 Brian Rose: When was the moment what you knew something had shifted? Like, my business is gonna start doing good, I’m onto something powerful here. Was there a moment in a season where you’re like, okay, these people know me, my business is jacking up. Was there any inflection point like that?
26:35 Ryan Serhant: It was honestly, man. It was probably when I got my first major tax bill. Like, when I first realized, like, wait, I got to pay taxes quarterly based on income I think I’m gonna make in the future, and it’s well, how much I have to write a check. Oh, this is terrible. He’s just like, at that point I was like you know what, if I make enough money to pay this much in tax, then I guess I’m doing okay.
27:05 Like that and the incoming leads from the show took a long, long time. Like, what was the last time you picked up the phone? Like, call someone on a television show? Yeah, you know, you know, like, you don’t do it. And so it took a long time, but it was what it did.
27:22 It was, it opened up doors for me that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to open. It just, it was a lot of out calls for me. So cold emails, cold calls, and saying oh, and by the way, I’m on this television show, you know, would love to meet. And it, it was a little bit of a hook. I’m like, and I had the hook, and I didn’t have any other hook, and no hook.
27:39 Like I couldn’t say, hey, I know you because you’re friends with Bob. I went to school on 84th Street with Bob. Like I don’t have any of that. Everybody else in this idiot, that, and so I had to use the hooks that I had, and that was my one.
27:52 Brian Rose: I mean, you’re kind of the first celebrity real estate broker.
27:55 I mean, that used media like that to grow your business, I guess.
27:59 Ryan Serhant: So I think, I mean, a lot of people do it too. I mean they’re listening. LA has been on for a lot longer than New York has, but I think that I, I, the minute I saw that it was working, like a couple years into it, then I was like, you know what, let’s milk this thing. Let’s pitch Bravo, other shows.
28:19 And so, Sell It Like Serhant again, it comes out, and let’s, let’s turn that into a book. Book comes out, let’s turn that into a course. We launched a course, right? Let’s, let’s, let’s show all the stuff that I can’t do on Million Dollar Listing New York because there’s not enough time. So, like, my personal life and my thoughts and the things going through my head, and let’s, let’s put that on the vlog.
28:37 Let’s start a YouTube channel and, you know, let’s really, really make Instagram a business, and let’s go after TikTok now, and, like, why not, you know? It’s all there. And I, I don’t know. Like, I remember, I don’t know if this is a book or not but I, I have this morbid memory, being with my grandfather, driving by a cemetery and him saying, “Do you know who’s in there?” And I was like, “Dead people.”
29:06 He was like, “No, a basketball player you’ll never know of, and a mathematician you’ll, you’ll never know of, and a guitar player you’re never gonna know, because they never reach their full potential, even though they had it in them. And I was super young, and it locked me up. It was, it was like, and it still sits with me to this day. Like, man, I, my, my biggest fears are the fear of failure. Yeah, but 100%, the fear of wasted potential.
29:33 Like, there’s so much that we can do every day. Why not just do it? What’s the worst that can happen? Doesn’t work. Like, well, great, it wasn’t working anyway.
29:41 Brian Rose: When you heard doing it, so didn’t put it out there. Yeah, there’s a graveyard by our studio in London. I always walk by the graves and think, you know does that person wish they hadn’t have taken that extra risk? You know, don’t they wish they would have? Are they still worried about what someone would have thought, or the failure?
29:58 Would they’ve done it all over again and gone, you know? Yeah, or like, you know, there’s that movie Whiplash, another J.K. Simmons movie, random. He’s got that great kind of line where he talks about, you know, the two worst words in the English language: “a good job.” Because when you tell someone “good job” they stopped trying.
30:17 Ryan Serhant: And my dad very rarely said “good job.” It was tough, you know. He was tough. He pulled me off the field when I was playing baseball in fifth grade. Less embarrassing moment of my life, but in his head, he was just saving me time.
30:31 Like, “Baseball’s not for you.” He tried it on to the next one. He made me play every single sport just to see what would stick, because he knew that if he didn’t force me to do it, I’d be like any other kid and just want to be at home and play video games. And now I know why. Don’t I have to go do that?
30:46 And so I’m glad I did it. I was terrible at all of them, but at least I’m glad I did it.
30:51 Brian Rose: Now that you’re a father, do you have a new perspective on parenting, man?
30:56 Ryan Serhant: No, daughter still young, but yeah, I really hope my wife is the tough one. It is so hard for me to say no to her, you know, and I just want to, like, I just, so right now I don’t say no.
31:07 I say yes to everything. Everything she does, she cries, something I can’t, sure, take it. You want my phone? Whatever. You leave my clothes, just rip them up, be happy.
31:13 So it’s gonna be, I don’t know how my dad did what he did. I the hardest thing for a parent to do is say no and deal with it, and it’s gonna be tough. I mean, I know I’m gonna have to do it, but, man, it’s gonna suck.
31:24 Brian Rose: It was, he did it out of love yeah, but it’s not. Now, yeah, but it’s a more natural reaction to want to be loved by your kid, by doing that.
31:31 Ryan Serhant: You’re not gonna be loved in the short term, but later, after he’s dead, he’ll be respected. But yeah, so you know, discipline as a parent.
31:38 Brian Rose: Yeah, you bought $8,000,000 place in Brooklyn recently, and you said that you pushed yourself to do it. You’re like, it’s, it’s still a lot of money, but I’m doing it because I need to be that guy, and I need to make the money that also becomes that guy. Is that accurate way of describing that?
31:54 Ryan Serhant: Oh yeah, I’m a type of person. I need to put myself under financial pressure to force myself to make things happen. You know, I got to put myself, I talked about in the book too. Like, I, I got a, I got to push myself up against a wall, and not having money in 2008 got me into real estate. Had I had my parents sent me a check or had I had a survival job or something?
32:14 Why would I ever have gotten into real estate, like knowing myself back then? I want to be a real estate agent? Like, real estate agents are the worst. Okay, bad reputation. Yeah, you know I don’t want to do that.
32:25 I was like, run around the city all day long showing apartments to people that hate me. Like, I don’t know, I don’t do that. And then when I got into it, I’m like, I gotta change this business. I got to change the way real estate agents thought of, the way salespeople are thought of, because it is just weird. But yeah, like, with the house, like when I bought my apartment in Soho, like I paid 3.6 million.
32:43 I didn’t have 3.6 million dollars, but I knew that if I could figure out how to afford it, I would then end up doing enough business to make it seem like an easy purchase years later. No, us, you know? Same thing with the house same thing with everything else I do. I put myself under so much pressure that it forces me to figure it out otherwise, data. I have watched Netflix, you know, right?
33:06 Brian Rose: And that’s why you talk a big game and say I’m the best and project all this stuff out, because then you got it right. How are the vision board, right? Power, a positive energy like, you, if you put it out into the atmosphere over and over, it’ll happen.
33:17 Ryan Serhant: Like, it’s, you know, your people talk to me all the time about how, if they want to build their brand, I give a great brand. I want to build a brand.
33:24 How do I build my own brand? And, like, your brand is your reputation, and your reputation is totally controlled by you and your ability to communicate who you are with the people you work with, and you can do that. That’s something I can control. I don’t ever want to be stressed out by the things I can’t control. Like, can’t go make a logo, stick it on the internet, and then hope people pay attention to it.
33:45 Like, that’s, logos, I’ll come later.
33:47 Brian Rose: Yeah we both know Grant Cardone, and he’s got a line that says, if, if you don’t know me, you can’t do business with me.
33:53 Ryan Serhant: Sure. He’s all about building this profile. Is that something that you think as well?
33:57 Brian Rose: Like, the more people know you, the more business you potentially can get?
34:01 Ryan Serhant: Yeah, I can’t sell something to someone I don’t know, you know? And so that was the idea with the show. Like, the more people who know what you sell, the better, because you never know there are seven billion people on this planet. I have not sold an apartment to all of them.
34:17 There’s so many different people out there don’t know me. There’s deals I get done in New York every single minute, and they’re not doing through me. And why not? Because I don’t know them. Because I didn’t meet them.
34:27 Because didn’t think they could reach out to me, whatever reason. Is I want to put myself out there as much as possible, and that’s the, that’s the benefit. One to the television show, you know, to the shows where people can see it and say, oh, maybe I’ll reach out to that guy. It’s the benefit to, to the vlog, right? To everything on social is kind of building up that passive audience where you put the content out, you move on.
34:47 You put the content out, you move on, and someone will see it and someone will reach out. Do people have reached out to me from stuff I put out there, like, three years ago like, oh, I saw this video three years ago, I’m now ready to do something. Are you interested? Yeah, great. One of my first big deals I got because I sent the guy a postcard, like, in 2012, and you just held on to it.
35:07 Brian Rose: What do you, to teach you, because you have been on cable television? Yeah, you open your YouTube channel. You weren’t really serious about it from the beginning. Tons of production value, went all-in. Yeah, jacked up your subscribers really fast.
35:19 Yeah, but it’s a different medium, younger audience. Yeah, what did you learn about that?
35:24 Ryan Serhant: It’s quick. YouTube is fast. TV takes time.
35:26 Everything I’m filming today for a million-dollar listing. You’re not gonna see, probably, till, like, the fall or so, you know, but on YouTube, I can, I can, I can use it to build my business. It’s like the property tours and everything I do it’s now something where I can come in versus every other real estate agent I compete with, and say, plus, I’m also gonna do a property tour for you and put it on a YouTube channel. This is our sub base. This is our analytics.
35:48 This is how we run ads against it, against other people who are looking for properties, and I can make it tomorrow. I’ll put it up in two days. First is, let’s film it for the show, and it would be great, but it won’t be out there till the fall, you know. And we sell things for YouTube all the time now, more so than any other medium, because it’s immediate, and you can target it against people who are looking for a real estate, you know. I’ve been, flow like, our original vlogs, I think we’re super melodramatic and very much in my head.
36:13 And now the ones we do today, or I think, are a mixture of kind of like the inspirational and the dramatic, but also a lot more fun, and they’re quicker, and it’s faster, so you can, you can adapt, and you can change.
36:25 Brian Rose: And how do you want to change the real estate agent industry? Like you said, used to be this, and you want to make it this. You want to make it more professional. You want to make it more value add.
36:35 Ryan Serhant: I want to, you know, real estate. Good real estate agents are really good people, and crazy. Like, they’re creating the sense that they have opted for a lifelong career with no base salary, no benefits, no nothing. Like he said, once it was like a glorified waiter. Wait like at the tip?
36:53 Do you wake up every day as a real estate agent? You have no idea what’s gonna happen today. Like, that’s, huh, that takes some courage. I’m not going on the bank and check it in, and I’m gonna get my salary, and let’s see what the bonus is. I think that’s, it’s not how we work.
37:06 And so then the good ones worked their ass off. And I think that there’s always been this reputation that salespeople, real estate agents included, are driven by fees and driven by commissions. And I think some are, and they’ll push their clients to do anything, and that’s not what I do. And I think the best ones are the most, or the advocates for their clients, right? And we’re there to give advice and to help, and to really help people not make dumb decisions, because with all these different websites that have come up to give all the information, to get rid of the real estate agents, there’s now way too much information, and people don’t know what to do with it all, and, like, they got their own jobs, you know, making their money so they can afford this real estate.
37:43 So now it’s more than ever our job to be able to walk these people through the information and explain to them, listen, I know you like that apartment, but here are the things you need to think about, and here’s my experience over the last ten years that kind of point us in the direction of maybe not moving forward with that one, you know, and that’s a client relationship that you want to be able to have.
38:03 Ryan Serhant: No I can’t force anybody to buy anything.
38:05 Brian Rose: You had a customer recently that said he wanted to buy something, like, ten to twenty million dollar range, and you ended up showing him something for forty and bought it for, like, 31.
38:14 When they buy something like that through you, how much of that is them buying you?
38:20 Ryan Serhant: I think, listen, my job is to help people make a decision that they were probably gonna make anyway, but they’re gonna make it with me, and they’re gonna feel better about making it. Would he have bought that apartment for 31 million dollars, had not shown him other things? Not, but he’s a lot happier that he did versus everything else, you know, and I was just showing him options, but a lot of it is about the personality, right?
38:48 My ability to walk them through the process and talk to him about the benefits and if they got that kind of money, they should see a lot of other things. I also, more that I also talk a lot of people off, letters, from spending way too much money. I’ve got a client literally right now, my phone is off, but he’s probably blowing up my phone. He really wants this place, and he really wants to buy it for six million dollars, and I’m like, no. If you want to get an offer on it, all you have to do it on your own.
39:11 I, you can’t afford it, can’t afford it, and it’s gonna stress you out, which in turn is gonna stress me out. We need to look at things less expensive, and if you like that type of quality, we got to go into other neighborhoods. The West Village is just, meet you expensive. Like, I’m, I don’t want. Okay, I don’t want him to make a dumb decision.
39:28 Um, I probably spend more of my time telling people no than I do telling people, yeah you should do that. It’s easy. Like, you know what a good property is when you walk into it. Should I buy this? Oh yeah, that’s awesome.
39:39 It’s great. Let’s get a good deal on it. Yeah, I think of the times when I paid more than I wanted to, but I wouldn’t, about that normally, and sometimes I walk out thinking, I’m really glad I did. You know, yeah, went over my budget, got something I’m really gonna like.
39:51 Brian Rose: Do you think people should get into real estate?
39:53 Like, kids, 22, you’re here. Do you think they should go that route, or are you one saying, look, it’s also really hard, and there’s not enough deals to support all the brokers?
40:02 Ryan Serhant: There’s definitely enough deals. There’s, there’s enough world to go around, right? There’s enough real estate to go around, and I think anyone should get into it who likes it, right?
40:12 But you, you have to be smart. Like, the real estate business is not a real estate business. My business is a people business. All right, it’s a people, it’s an email, it’s a structure business, and you got to do well under pressure, and under stress, and you’ve got to be able to interact with people all day long. Your job is to generate leads.
40:29 That’s really what my job is. I would wake up every day, and I try to meet new people. That’s it. My job is very, very little to do with real estate. Like, you have tin ceilings in here, sweet.
40:39 Like, I don’t, you know I’ve made a lot of people who are like, oh, I grew up on HGTV, I love real estate, that’s what I want to be a broker. Like, then you should go work for a contractor or an architect or interior designer. Real estate’s and not for you. You want to deal with the grandmother yelling at you over five bucks?
40:56 Brian Rose: No, that sounds terrible.
40:57 Ryan Serhant: Yeah you should not, and you should not do this. Okay, so it’s right. Taking an amazing business man, like, it’s one of the best careers in the United States anyway, because there’s limitless potential. There’s also, like, death and poverty if you don’t work, you know. You gotta sell stuff.
41:14 You gotta make money, but no one is ever gonna tell me I sold too much. No one’s ever gonna come to me and say, you know what, Ryan? It’s too good of a month. Class money to pipe it down. You know, your commissions are now not gonna reflect how much work you’ve done.
41:25 No one will ever say that. You know, I’d rather be commissioned. I’d rather eat what I kill. I don’t want someone telling me what to do.
41:31 Brian Rose: Let’s talk about your routine.
41:32 You cover all this in the book. And how’s your, cell, you wake up in the morning and say, “Ready, set, go”?
41:38 Brian Rose: Yeah, what does that mean? I’ll burn through this stuff. Yeah.
41:41 Ryan Serhant: Brady said go from me is my kind of morning mantra. I say it all the time about everything, but it’s, it’s that get-up-and-go attitude, right? It’s that mindset, that, like, everything is a race, you know? And, like, let’s just go. Like, you got a, like, it’s my coffee, and then it’s fine doorkeeper, do, or you’ve got different modes that you’re in all day.
41:59 Brian Rose: Yeah, is that finder of getting the leads or how does that work?
42:02 Ryan Serhant: Yes, it’s how I structure my day, because otherwise I would have no structure and I would lose my mind. So my finder time is when I, when I focus on my business as a whole movement, and I think about how I’m gonna build business, how many, get those new leads, how I’m gonna prospect, tell me to go after those listings. It’s how I’m gonna get into different types of vlogs or start a new channel, or you know, all that stuff.
42:24 The keeper time is basically focusing on the money that I have or don’t have, the advertising expenses the marketing expense is what I’m gonna spend this month. How am I gonna invest back into my business to make business and then the doer time is the rest of my day. That is what I actually do. All the work,
42:40 Brian Rose: follow up is everything in your business? Yeah, talk about that.
42:43 Ryan Serhant: Follow up for me is broken down into 3x. So, follow up, follow through, and follow back, where, like, it’s kind of like what we were just saying, you know. I want to sell as much as I can to people who know that I sell things, and you meet so many people all the time. You got to stay on top of them, you know. The most of the deals I do now are not because people came to me and said, I want to buy that apartment right now, can you help me right now?
43:08 And I’ll also pay you a commission. Like, I don’t think that’s ever happened to me. Unfair. Most people are like, yeah, I know, I’m thinking about it. I don’t know, like, my lease is up in November.
43:20 Or no, yeah, I keep you posted. It’s a guy I’m gonna stay on top of, right? So that when they wake up that one day and they say, real estate I gotta move, Ryan, but keep sending me listings, Ryan Serhant, what else? You know, that’s it, right? Average time to sell a house over 4 million is 400 days in this city.
43:39 Brian Rose: Yeah, people should think about that number. This is a follow up, follow up, chase up. This is not follow up, follow that. I said boom, boom, commissions. It can’t be really quick.
43:48 Ryan Serhant: I mean, but it’s all dependent on price. Like, New Yorkers are also very stubborn people, and they will negotiate the price of a banana. So, like, you know, a lot that, days on market, is so high because someone has an apartment that’s worth 3 million dollars, but their friend Bill got four and a half, three years ago. So I’m gonna put mine on for four and a half. Let’s just see what happens.
44:11 All right, so I try not to take less. Things like that. But oftentimes, you know, you know, if you got to work with him, you know, you got to let them kind of be educated. It’s kind of like what, the baby now, like my wife wants to hold the baby everywhere, so that she doesn’t fall and hurt herself, but it’s sometimes like she’s got to know that if she puts her finger there, if she falls over, like, you don’t want to get hurt, but she’s got to know, like, what probably shouldn’t do that again though.
44:34 “I shall never ever ever learn.”
44:36 Brian Rose: Hmm. She finished up on the seventh stage of selling: excitement, frustration, fear, disappointment, except it’s happiness, relief. Also, the seven stages, grief, as well.
44:44 Ryan Serhant: The same, exactly the same.
44:45 So, and that’s just the cycle that’s gonna go through, someone’s emotions, almost every time, sometimes quicker than others.
44:51 Brian Rose: Yeah, and you need to be aware of it, and allow your client to feel those things. Yeah, all footsy, it’s almost like the coach, the therapist, through this.
44:59 Ryan Serhant: Always, I think one of the worst things a salesperson can do is try to make their client feel something different. Okay, they’re angry if I pick up the phone and try to make them happy, it’s just gonna piss them off more, and maybe they lie to me and tell me, “Oh, no, no, I’m happy,” but they’re gonna hang up the phone and then kill the deal.
45:15 All right, you let them be angry, be angry with them. You gotta be empathetic with people. Let them go through their own thing, because you’re not down. I’m not the one spending the money, right? Who’s the broker?
45:25 And so if you’re gonna be upset, if you’re gonna have buyer’s remorse, if you can be excited, let’s be excited, let’s do it together, and then you just have to anticipate those next moments, which is why I have that. Sex, we’re just like a doctor, like you, you anticipate those feelings so that you know what’s coming next. And if those feelings don’t come next, bonus, right? Like I’ve got clients, sometimes you were only excited all the time. Greats, I prep for the sadness, but maybe they’ll never get there.
45:55 That’s fine, but most of the time people do run through those emotions, and you got to be prepared. You got to know how to handle them so that you don’t lose it.
