Ryan Serhant we all know, Ryan, he’s the star problems, million dollar listing, New York creator of one of the most. Real estate brands in the world. 2021 was super busy for this guy. He released a new book. I opened his own firm, which has blown up. He’s also created a new course on branding for real estate agents and professionals.

We’ll be talking about all that with him this morning, but first of all, Ryan big, welcome to the GPG mastermind this week. Everybody can give them a big round of applause. Welcome Ryan here. Yeah. Good to see you. Now you’ve been a guest on the podcast a couple of times, and there’s a lot of adjectives to describe you.

The one that I like to use is a prolific. Prolific. And the reason why it’s hard to think about, you know, the fact that you could be doing more in real estate, you know, from sales to branding and marketing, to running a firm, it’s hard to think you could actually be doing more. So I just want to kick things off by asking about how you would describe the last 12 months of your business, as well as the industry, as a whole, you know, how’s it been for you in your.

I think like everybody, the market’s been great, right? It’s been strong. It’s great to have people want to buy houses and want to sell houses. Um, it’s not great when there’s no one to sell and we’re in a really, really tight inventory market because then you have buyers, but what are you gonna do with them?

Um, you know, but since cov, I guess since the summer of 2020 for us, you know, especially in New York city, it took a bit to kind of get up and running, but it’s been really strong and we do deals between. No Brooklyn Queens, south Florida, Miami and Palm beach are good markets for us. Big markets for us as is, the Hamptons.

Um, we’re now spreading our wings into different marketplaces as the brokerage grows. Um, and it’s fun, man. It’s exciting. It’s totally crazy. And I’m glad that people are excited about spending money versus the market that I got into at 2008, nine and 10, where people were like, why would I ever spend money on a house?

We’re all going to die. That was no fun. Yeah. It’s been an eventful, last couple of years in the industry. That’s for sure. So like I said, You know, to think that you could be doing more yet. Here we are at the beginning of 2022, you have a new branding course, or agents, which is so relevant. You know, it’s important that we focus on that because personal brand is not only the number one asset agents need to generate leads, but it’s also what you are best known for.

So I want to start this Q and a by asking a question that many real estate professionals need to consider, which is what’s the difference between branding and selling in Europe. Oh, man, there’s a massive difference. Um, you have to think of personal brand as your foundation, right? Your personal brand these days.

And it didn’t used to be this way, real estate agents prior to let’s say 2009, you know, your personal brand could mean something if you had one, but other than that, you were your brokerage, right? You where your brokerage name on your lapel, it was on your card. I’m an agent with ax and that was really, really important.

Now. It’s very, very different people want to work with you. They follow you on social. They get your mailers, they see your face up there. They don’t care that you can turn lights on and open doors and send them offers. They care that they’re working with you. And it’s always been that way. But now it’s, it’s just very, very, very real.

And you can build a whole business on you now. Um, and so personal brand has that foundation it’s think about. Okay. Think about a housing development. The land the development is built on is your personal brand. Everything starts there. If it’s the land, everything on top. It is going to be kind of, and it’s location, location, location, if it’s great, land everything on top of it has an amazing chance of also being great and building your personal brand is, is systematized.

That’s what we, that’s what I use with my agents here. Um, at the company that we’re building our employees and every agent that’s in our satellites are hit headquarters, all enough, you know, 18,000 of them in 109 countries. So we help them build their personal brands so that they can. Organically generate leads.

The idea is how do you stop spending money to generate leads? And how can you do it as you so that you don’t wake up a broken. You wake up a brand and the minute you realize that that’s a thick brokers sell, okay. The brands bring in the actual clients, that’s customer acquisition. And that’s really what our job is.

As agents is to be a lead generator, nothing else, everything will change for you. It’s like that happened for me in 2013 and it was eyeopening. So wait a minute. I don’t wake up a broker. I’m not going to go be a broker all day. That’s part of my work. I’m going to wake up as a brand. That land is your personal brand.

If you build it right, then you can do anything else on top of it, put towers on top of it, houses on top of it. Instagram is a house on top of your land, Tik TOK, their house, your team over here is a. Right. Your family is a house, a different kind of house over here, private, or totally open to the world.

It’s up to you, you know? Um, and it really depends, but once you kind of really understand how that works and just stop going through life, guided by everybody else, seeing if things are going to work and saying, ah, I don’t know, everything changes. Yeah, those are, those are really good illustrations. And they do say that 90% of salespeople sell 10% brand.

However, that 10% way out sell the 90%. That’s a fact, right? So you need to pay attention to branding. So here’s the question. How does an agent go about discovering and defining their personal brand? Public persona, like what steps should they take or what suggestions would you have for an agent to start the process of branding?

What should they be thinking about? So what we teach, right, as you mentioned, we have a, a personal brand, um, bootcamp. We have pro we call them pro members all over the world that sign up with us and they work with my. Publicists my personal brand strategists. I have a lot of people that work for me personally, that have helped me get to where I am and now they also work with other people.

But what we have is we call it a circuit brand strategy system. Okay. It’s three parts because it is possible for every single person on here. And anyone who’s going to listen to the recording and anyone else out there who’s in sales to build their own personal brand. Okay. Brand is reputation. It’s what you’re known for.

Okay. And it all starts with who you are in your core. What is your core identity? Because who you believe you are, right? You are real estate and. I’m real estate and I’m a mom, I’m a real estate and I’m a mountain biker I’m real estate. And I have 17 cats, whatever it is. Okay. That core identity then becomes your perception that the world has a view.

Okay. Because that’s what you’re putting out into the world. So then the world has a perception of you because that’s the way you’re vocalizing who you are. So when you look, it’s the way you’re putting content out, it’s everything. However you believe who you are in your core, that perception then turns into.

Because then eventually you have to leave the room, right? You’re not in the conversation anymore. They flipped off your page online. Now they’re talking about you behind your back. What is that? Right? What does that, what does that, you know, reputation and reputation is that brand? So how do we build that?

Three parts first is determining core identity. Hey, who are you do your core. And to do that, you do an exercise called finding your aunt, which I just said, like I am, when I first heard. I wanted my brand to be luxury real estate. When people thought luxury real estate, I want them to think me. And so I was Ryan real estate and luxury, luxury real estate, right.

Real estate and luxury. So I’m going to be anywhere luxurious there’s fancy cars, fancy boats, fancy houses, whether they’re my listings or not. I want to be associated with all things luxury because people who can afford luxury. We’ll also like things luxury and they want to talk to somebody that also likes those things.

And they want to complain about them too, because misery loves company, especially when it’s rich. So what is it as my life changed, it became. And I realized, okay, I really understand how to turn content into commerce or an our business content into contracts. And so then I switched, which is fine and went from, I am real estate and media, and now people in exclusive agreements, listing contracts, everything say you’re going to do on your YouTube videos here.

That’s in the agreement. Otherwise I’m hiring somebody else. Yes, I will do a YouTube video here. Hmm. People demand that you’re going to do an Instagram rail with my wife. Yes. What do you want me to do with your wife? Ah, got it. Okay, perfect. I’ll do that. Yeah. Sure. So it’s real estate and media. Okay. Once you determine what that core identity is, step two is consistent content.

You gotta be consistent with it. If you don’t want to do it, you don’t like it. You want to be a private person. No problem. But no company. Okay. Yeah, no consistent content across platforms or don’t pick one. Which one do you like Facebook happens to be probably one of the most successful platforms you can use in sales.

And I’m still not that great at it, much better at YouTube and Instagram followed by probably tick-tock then Facebook than Twitter, which I suck at. And my thoughts are, I don’t think as interesting as, you know, as others. Pick what you like a medium that’s comfortable for you and maybe you don’t like the way you look.

Right. Okay. So Twitter is your medium as it is LinkedIn. Okay. There you go. You got to, you can, now you have to write consistent content, thoughts, ideas, and its opinions. Why does anyone watch the news? You don’t watch the news to hear the news. You can get it on your phone. Your phone is giving you a hundred alerts a day.

You know the news, before you turn on the news, you watch the news for that person’s opinion on news. You already know, or news you could find out on your own, except it’s easier to do it this way. And I want to watch her tell me or him tell me, okay. Consistent content as a sales person is the same thing.

People seen houses before, but they want to see. In the house. They want to see you talking about that house. They want to see you dissecting your market data in your town. It’s low inventory. Why? Look. Talk about it, post about it, consistent content and connect it to your aunt. Like I have, we have a course member.

Um, there’s a lot. Um, I’m trying to think of one example. Okay. We have a guy Andy he’s in, outside Phoenix and Arizona. And he came to me. He was like, eh, I don’t like the way they look. I don’t like the way I talk. I do a good amount of business, but I’m not. And I don’t get it. I don’t, I don’t have a personal brand.

After 30 minutes of like mental pain, we determined that he actually really likes. And he’s really good at it. And he would cook. He cooked this Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas dinners. He cooks all the time, cooks for clients. Like how come you didn’t tell me that? He’s like, well, because everyone cooks like, dude, you want to see me cook?

I promise you. You’re going to change that sentence after you see me try to cook anything. Now he creates YouTube. With every listing, he goes into every new listing. He gets, he creates a meal, cooks it in, it shows off the kitchen. He is now the cooking broker in his marketplace. He’s doubled his sales and he.

And he still doesn’t get it, but he does it so great, but he still was like, but I’ve always got it, but it works right as an example, third step in the brand strategy system. And we go through all of this in the course, by the way, like really, really go through it. It’s like five and a half hours of video modules and a 72 page workbook and my brand strategist, the whole thing.

Third is what I call, shout it from the mountain top, which also means to amplify. So then it’s how do you become known in your market as the one who sells X? How do you do that? How do you work with reporters in your market? Whether you’re in a big market or a small market to be the go-to so that if you are in a, I was with pro members yesterday last night, they do like 200 million a year in Toronto.

People very rarely know who they are though, but it’s good brokers. Like you need to hire a publicist and you need to be known as Toronto’s real estate thought leaders. You really want to do more business. You can’t just do posters and signs and social ads and referrals and knocking on doors and cold calls or ads.

You want people who don’t even know they want to buy her. Be reading an article about their local town or city. That’s interesting. And then have you quoted because you’re the thought leader when people think real estate, they think you, and so how do you do that? How do you build those relationships with reporters?

How do you meet people? How do you create. That consistent content, but in written form, how do you write, write, how do you put that out there so that people know about you and how do you shout those successes from a mountain top? Maybe you don’t write, maybe you hate writing. Maybe you don’t know how to spell.

Maybe you’re dyslexic. Okay. Great. Social is incredibly visual and you can have someone else type out your sentences. There are no excuses anymore. It is 2022. You can show yourself, you don’t even have to, you can be whoever you want these days and get to where you want to get to however you want, but you build that land and make it sturdy.

You have confidence. Not in who you are today, but in who you want to be one year from now, two years from now, write that out. Who does that person, what do they look like? How much money they have in the bank? What did you just sell? Are you married? One kid, two kids, zero kids. Do you have 10 dogs? Whatever.

Write it out. If you look at that piece of paper or that note app in your phone every day, you will become that person before the timeline that you gave yourself to do it. Um, and you mix that three-part stress. And then all the help we’ll give you in the course and everything, because this is just, this is very short.

You mix that with giving yourself the confidence, a future, you, and you can be whoever you want. Like I, and this is, I am not a coach by the way, just as a caveat to whoever’s listening, not coach, I’m not a guru. I’m not your mentor. I’m a real estate broker in New York city. I’m negotiating, probably three.

A hundred million in different deals. Right now I have 130 agents who work for me. I, 50 staff on payroll. My monthly expenses are $1.1 million. I don’t do this because I need to, I just like, if I can help salespeople be better, grow their own brands and sell more, it’s going to help all of us. You know, that’s why I did millionaire listing in the first place.

Um, 10 years ago. Anyway, I just talk way too much. This is like a Q and a isn’t it? Well, no, I mean, there was so much fire in there and I hope everybody’s. Taking notes on this. Cause I mean, you covered a lot there, you know, you did cover, you know, content, you know, we know that all the social media platforms are moving to video first.

So that’s super important. We know that, um, you know, the type of content you covered that. You know, the consistency actually, I wanted to drill down on consistency for a minute. Just we, you know, we had, um, at one of our recent masterminds, we had, Eric Simon broke agent. And one of the things he was talking about was, you know, it took him years of consistent posting, like twice a day, whether you liked it or not.

And eventually it did pay off. Right. He got the traction of Benchley. So if you’re not consistent, know it’s like pumping out. Well, it all goes back down. So, I mean, you did touch on that. One of the things you do talk about though, and I love your break down on this is when you talk about dressing for success and you talk about.

And big money, energy, not to divert too much away from the course, but dressing for success. Can you, can you give us your thoughts on that? Because I love you to take on this. Yeah. I mean, it’s a touchy subject because my opinions on this are very different from the woke opinions of today. You know, I appreciate wanting to be an individual.

I appreciate like be yourself first and foremost. I appreciate originality. I appreciate authentic. I also understand that in our business we are salespeople, right? That’s it. I don’t work for anybody other than the various clients that I have, you know, the buyers, the sellers, the developers, and the way I present myself is a visual show of respect.

For those clients. Now, listen, I have clients where, when I show up with a suit and tie, they might not want to work with me. So it’s an improvise, right? I have a literally you can’t see it, but I have like a suit jacket with a hood on it. You know, it’s like a zipper hood thing. And if I’m meeting someone who I don’t think is going to want to sit with someone in a.

Because they’re, I don’t know, younger. Um, I’ll quickly put on that and now I’m showing respect for you because you don’t want to work with someone your dad works with, but depending on where you are, like, I don’t wear suits. Because they feel good. Like, I don’t, like I just said, I am literally being strangled by thread right now.

I’m not doing this because like, wow, this is great. The same way. You know, if you’re a woman, like you don’t wear high heels because man, I love the way these feel. Right. Like I do it out of respect for my clients so that what you’re showing them is I’m not putting me first. I’m putting you first. You’re my client.

You wear whatever you want to wear. Okay. I am dressed for success, meaning that I am dressed as a show of respect to you and I’m keeping it simple. Will I spice things up here and there? Sure. Do I wear nice suits? Yes. But if I was just being authentic to me, then I’d probably wear like jeans, a t-shirt and a backwards hat, and then I’d sell like a billion dollars less a year, but.

Well, everyone else I’m me. I’m doing me, you know? Um, and so that’s why, like, I think it’s important to like maybe suits and ties. Aren’t you, you know, if I were a broker and I think I have to give a speech, in San Antonio, Texas on. Like, I’m not rolling up in a suit and tie. And if I were an agent in San Antonio, Texas, I wouldn’t wear a suit and tie every day either.

Maybe I would unimportant days in certain clients, but otherwise I would actually end up standing out. The majority of my clients are finance, you know, their private equity venture capital. This is New York after all. Um, and they wear suits and ties. So I want to assimilate with them. I want to be seen, you know, in associated.

With them. If I was a broker in Hawaii, I would, I would sweat so much. I would not be able to wear this everywhere in the board shorts. Yeah, of course. I’d have to present Colorado. I gave a speech in Denver this past Friday, um, to a lot of agents. I totally, I would cowboy boot it up. I’d have a buckle on my belt.

I’d have a couch. I can’t see with the buckle, bro. I can’t, I can’t see it, dude. I grew up, I know you’re from there, but yeah. Raise your hand. If you see Ryan Serhant with a big buckle, it’s not going to happen. That would go viral though.

Um, so this is really cool. Like we had to, I wanted to ask you about, um, you know, dressing for success, because I think it is a part of your brand, right? What you’re known for, you know, as you mentioned your reputation and as you talk about in the course, you know, your brand is a strategically cultivating.

Package that represents you. And what’s actually kind of cool about the courses. You can process this out, you can process it out. And I think, um, you know, your look and you know, how you’re dressing for success actually, um, adds to that. Or it’s a part of that. Now I do want to ask you about, motivation specifically.

You do talk about. Quite a bit in your book, self motivating, especially over the last two years, you know, the industry’s changed quite a bit. You know, a lot of people have gone online and things like that. So it’s imperative that we need to like self-motivate how can we do that? What steps can we take?

And how do you find the motivation to do what you do? I mean, you did touch on like kind of a one-year vision board, but self motivation, super important. Maybe you could touch on your daily routine as well. Cause I know that’s pretty. Um, yes, I’m very, if you asked anybody who works with me, what they think my like secret sauce is, you know?

Um, I think they would probably just say discipline, I guess it’s not much else, but like, you know, so I’m 37. Okay. And I realized when I first got to new. That New York takes no prisoners. I was not living at home anymore. I lived in a 300 square foot apartment and shared a bathroom with 16 people in Korea town.

And like, that was different for me. Um, and there’s no crying in New York city. It’s either you figure it out or you. And New York is totally fine to ship your home. Um, and so I had to figure it out pretty quickly and you have to be disciplined. And I think the big difference between people who make it okay.

Um, and people who don’t is that you have, you know, professionals and you have amateur. All right, you have adults and you have kids and professionals, people who make it, they make decisions based on their commitments. Everyone else make decisions based on how they feel. Okay. And I mean that as it’s, so like, as an example, um, I’m committed to doing a certain amount of deals this month.

I can’t make them come out of thin air. So that means how many people do I need to meet to create enough opportunities to hit that deal number? How many calls do I have to make emails? Do I have to set really break it down to the minutia? Right. Okay. I have to do that now. Let’s say it’s 8:00 PM. Okay. And I’m tired.

And amateur is going to say, I’ll do it to. Because you’re now making that decision based on how you feel. Is it okay to do that every now and then? Sure. But then you can’t complain when everyone else does better than you an adult, a professional, and the person who’s going to make it. It’s going to say, well, I don’t care if it’s eight, even if I have to go do something, we’ll come back to it with my own goals.

Like I’m not going to let myself down. That’s weird. Like I say the same thing. I see people’s apartments and houses or their desks, and they’re messy and they’re like a disaster. Like, you know, you live in this, right? Like this is like you, you made a mess for yourself. I don’t get it. I can’t just like it.

My, my, my brain gets broken it from it. Um, and so the discipline and the structure in the day is really important. The best piece of advice I ever got when I got into real estate was don’t focus on the money. Don’t focus on the deals, focus on the work. If you take care of the work, the work will take care of.

Everything else is just kind of part of, you know, you’ve got luck, you’ve got opportunity. You’ve got Cretia relationships, which is do the work, do the work, do not complain. And the work will take care of you and you will by default make money. And so I set and stay motivated by taking care of the work I fill my day up.

Like you have no idea. I wake up at four 30, um, Sunday through Friday. If, if I’m in the city, um, and I’m booked on the 15 minute, mark, my appointments start at seven 30. I have three hours in the morning to, um, rise from the dead and work out shower, get dressed, kiss wife, kiss, baby. Um, and then go first is the first point we start at 7:30 AM.

And then I’m back to back to back to back to back for between 12 to 14 hours. And it just depends on the day, right? What I’m doing. If I’m filming, then it’s like massive 15 minute blocks, you know, times like 10, cause things just take forever. And if I’m not like today’s a heavy office day, I’m, you know, on the 15 minute mark, because every, I found that most meetings don’t need to be a half hour an hour.

Right. Most. Really need to take ours. Sometimes they do and it’s okay. But most of the time I can get solid conversations and decisions made in 15 minutes and I can fit more into one day, then more other people can do in three. Um, and I want to make as much use of my time on this planet as I possibly possibly can and I stick to it.

And it’s important. Yeah. Um, did you think, you know, when you got into real estate, you know, in your words you had no money, you had, you didn’t have. You were sharing a bathroom with 16 people in Korea town. Then you also brokered one of the most expensive sales in us history in Florida, correct?

Yep. Um, it’s crazy to think about where you started, where you are and the reason why I I’d like you to, just maybe break down that story for a minute, if you could, because. It, it comes, comes back to creativity, creating deals out of thin air. You know, when there’s no inventory and looking for opportunity.

That’s one of the biggest problems agents have, right. Is, is, you know, acquiring listings when there’s no little to no inventory, even if you’re, you know, alternatively agents with buyers looking for inventory, but creating a deal out of thin air that was in a marketplace, you weren’t even in, and you created that deal.

That is correct. Yeah, listen, everything I’ve ever done has been because I’ve made it up. I just decided this is what I’m doing now. No one’s ever given me anything like everything. I have the company, all the departments, like I invented them and I printed the names and I put them on sweatshirts. Now they’re real.

Now there are things. So I started the brokerage in the middle of the pandemic in New York. Okay. We literally were like finalizing and putting everything out there. I was going to launch July 1st, 2020, but if you remember the end of June, 2020, where the George Floyd riots and Soho, and a lot of New York city was lit on fire.

And so. I pause for a second. Um, and we announced on September 15th, 2020 in the wall street journal. Um, and one of the things that I did because I’m okay, I’m starting my own company. I’m gonna name it after myself, with a period and I want to create a high net worth division. It’s not. But I’m going to make it, and it’s going to be called signature because sir, hands signature sounds cool.

And I’m going to create a page on the website. I’m going to change up the branding. It’s gonna be black and white versus the blue and white that we have for everything else. Blue means trust, right? Black means luxury colors are important. We go through all that in the course too. Um, and so I created this thing and I put it out there, sir, ham in association with Sirhan studios created that out of thin air, Serhant ID lab, which is our in-house creative agency.

Invented it. Right. All I’m saying all this to say that you can create whatever you want. Like there are no rules, you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a 10 99 independent contractor. You can do whatever and no one’s going to stop you. And no one’s ever going to come to you and say, Hey, Bob, I think he’s sold a little too much this year.

You need to pipe it down. Right. Do whatever you want. And then signature was written. And then, because I started a new company and everyone in New York in my markets is going to be nervous about working with a brand new company, no law, no matter how long I’ve been doing it for. Right. I’ve been in the business for 12 years.

No one cares. Now I just started my own thing in a pandemic. Most people thought I had COVID they thought I was sick, had the brain fog thing right there. Like you can’t taste food. So you’re starting your own company. Is it, are you okay? Um, and so, you know, I created. And then I started reaching out to, okay, I’ve created this high net worth division on a website, which is just me.

Um, how do I let people know about it? I reach out to people. So I started reaching out to private bankers attorneys, corporate attorneys, personal concierge is all these people. If you think about the type of clients you want, think about a bullseye, the clients you want, the ones with the money are in the middle and they are protected by the outer ring of the book.

That is that circle of trust. You have a very, very small chance of getting to the bullseye because they’re too busy, they’re working. And I’m like, why would I ever talk to you? You’re some broker right on up, you know, this circle of trust though. The bulls-eye has been working on that circle of trust for 50 years, 10 years, whatever it is.

And they know that that landscaper that they have. They’ve been working with for 10 years, they trust them because they haven’t let them down yet that concierge, that attorney, that banker everyone else, those people you can get to. That’s a huge part of our prospecting work even now is meeting more and more people in the circle of trust of the people we want to get to.

Um, so personal concierge is in major markets are important for wealthy people because wealthy people are too busy being wealthy and making money. They can’t. Like normal things, right? They’re not like they’re not planning their trips. They’re not taking out their dry cleaning. They have people who do that stuff.

And if you have a billion dollars or $10 billion, you know, you don’t, you have that kind of help. One of those concierge companies, it’s like, Hey, good to meet you. Really, really cool. We’ll keep you in mind. Um, that was. Beginning of January 20, 21. So a year ago, um, that same concierge company, because we’re doing all this prospecting gets back to me and says, Hey, tell me more about your signature program.

Yes, sir. And signature high net worth division. This is what we do for our sellers or buyers where like the concierge service is great. And I’m like, okay, cool. I have a, one of our clients, very, very high net worth billionaire. Um, once a rental in New York city, do you do rentals? Yeah. Yes, yes we do. I’m a brand new company, brand new brokerage.

I’ve got to make every money. I, I can because it is expensive. So yes, I do rentals. Okay. What’s his budget while he wants to, in the upper east side, he’s got a big budget, like 20, 30, 40, $50,000 a month. That doesn’t. Um, but, okay. So, it started showing them around, looking at things kind of started to hem and haw.

Like why, why are you renting a place in Manhattan on the upper east side? Long story short, I brought up, you know, buying a Manhattan because deals were heavy in the beginning of 20, 21. We were still in like, COVID deal land. We’re not anymore, but we were then, um, and, I was like, well, I don’t really want to own in New York anymore, you know, taxes and all that.

Okay. How do I get this guy to buy something? Um, what about Florida? Would you ever go to Florida and I don’t know. I don’t know Florida. You say 15%. On your taxes. What’s 15% of a billion dollars in income. That’s a lot of money. And I’m just a broker. I just met this person. Why am I having this conversation?

Because it’s not in his mind to pick up the phone and talk to his accountant. He’s just working all day long. People don’t think about this stuff. It’s up to us as the sales person, as the advisor, as the consultant to give our clients ideas, to make markets okay. It’s like, ah, oh, let me think about, let me talk to him.

Four hours later. Can you send me listings? I dunno, Miami Palm beach. We know some people who are down there. I don’t know if I’d ever actually moved there, but just send me some stuff.

Okay. How much you want to spend? I don’t know. 20, $30 million. Okay. Much better than a rental. All right. Let’s send you options.

These are. Okay. We have to raise the price. Sure. Send me options. Now it’s Wednesday. Send him a bunch of things. He says, all right. You know what? Yeah, I think we want to actually go see some of these things. But I don’t want to do Miami seems too young, too crazy. We’re like Palm beach. Let’s look at stuff that’s like on the water.

Let’s go like, okay. So when do you want to go to Palm beach? Um, I’ve been to Palm beach once it’s like tomorrow morning. I have time. We can just go down and come back tomorrow. Wednesday that’s a Thursday. Sure. And then he says you do Palm beach, right? Like you’re the guy. Yes, I do. I am the guy and because I’d moved to New York city in 2006 to do theater, I remembered.

The way you get into any marketplace, all you have to do is memorize information. It’s not that hard. So the same way I did with the first buyer I ever had on the west side of Manhattan, where I memorize all the information for every building, every block, every restaurant, every school district, just so in case she asks me a question, I could just go back to what I knew.

Um, same thing there. I spent the rest of Wednesday memorizing. Every street, every intersection, the history of the political faces, the schools where the police station was where the fire department was, all the comps, everything. So just in case he asked me any question. Yes, I do Palm beach and yes, I am the guy.

Okay. Um, we flew down that morning. The first house I showed him just for fun. ’cause when I show buyers, I like to show an a wow moment. If you’ve read my first spoke, we talked about the wow moment. I’d like to show them something that is so far beyond their price point. Um, even if they could afford it, I tell them not to.

It’s just fun. Let’s have fun. Let’s not stress out and just look at things in your budget. Let’s see. I want to show you one thing. That’s a little crazy. Let’s go see it. Okay. Remember, this is real estate. We’re not like going to Mars here. Um, and I took her to this house at north county road. That was on the.

For $140 million. Um, everything else we were seeing was between 20 and 50. So obviously super expensive houses everywhere, but one 40, like you could buy a tower for that, you know, not just one house. Um, and that was way above the budget he had given me so slightly risky. Um, and we go through, we go upstairs and he throws me against the wall.

On the second floor. Um, and I thought in that moment I was going to die. It was like, all right, I started a company it’s been a solid five months, four months at that point, this is it. This is how it goes. Death by billionaire could be worse, could be worse way worse. And I’m just like, I just, there’s only so many options.

Inventory’s limited. Florida’s really hot right now. The whole thing is like, I want it. What. But you really sure. Okay. Got it. Let’s keep walking. Keep it, keep your cool. Let’s just keep walking. Everything’s fine. And then what do you do when someone tells you they want something, you take it away, right?

Always take it away. Everyone, no matter how rich they are or poor, they are, everyone wants what they can. So, Nope, you can’t have this one. You’re not buying it. You’re not spending this kind of money. And I think they already have serious interest from somebody else. Now I’m playing to the ego. You ever meet a billionaire, you play to their.

Okay. And you bruise it just a little bit, right? Also all men. So then we leave and we go to the next house. It’s on the market for $50 million go in houses. Awesome. He walks in, walks out, nearly throws up awful house. Great. We go to the next house. It’s on the market for, I don’t know. I think it’s like 52 or so.

Sick house crazy. Nah, not not doing it lock in eye. They usually like now he’s being nice. I’ll get it out. We go back to the car, got like six more houses to show. Cause they take us back to the hotel. We’re not seeing anymore. Okay. Go get me that first one, the first one on the market for 140. Yeah. Okay. Um, just so you know.

There are no comps for this house. He’s like, yeah, just go get it. Give me the best deal you can. And to make a very long story, we did the deal within 15 hours for $133 million. Most expensive house ever sold in Florida, fastest deal I’d ever done. Um, and just goes to show you the power of personal. The power of building another house on top of that land, which for me was then signature because I created this high net worth division and the power of saying yes.

Do you do Palm beach? Yes, I do figure it out. You think inventory is tight in your local market? Guess what? There’s a globe. It’s a whole world. Whether you’re doing the deal or not, you have referral agents, all the agents. Right. There’s agents everywhere. That’s one of the reasons I started the course. So like storing it because I wanted to have good agents who are hungry enough to want to learn from me that I can refer deals to and vice versa versus like, Hey, we work at the same brokerage you’re in, you’re in Texas.

Okay. I’m going to send someone to you, Godspeed to all of us. Like, I don’t know who you are. And so that’s why we started it and it’s become a massive referral source and it’s been, it’s been great, but that is. You asked for that story? I did it. I, you know, it’s so profound though, and there’s so much in there.

I hope everybody paid really close attention because agents are just going to have to get creative. Right. Can’t rely on the MLS for inventory. You’re going to have to figure it out. And there was so much to unpack in that, that was an absolute clinic. So I appreciate you breaking that down and all those dog listings at 50 million, right?

All those dog listings, you know, it’s just incredible statistic. And everybody at bump up their, you know, their budget. I real quick, a couple of questions here. The first one is, what’s the most important thing you think agency to focus on in 2022, you know, besides branding, what should real estate agents and sales professionals be focusing on this year?

It has become abundantly clear that real estate agents are not going anywhere. The CEO of Zillow, even when in the wall street journal, Yeah, our systems don’t work, but please keep paying us and we will take your money. Right? When the IB program collapsed. That’s what his quote was. If you really look between the lines.

What we do, doesn’t really work, but it’s fine. Right. Um, real estate agents will never go anywhere until a house figures out how to sell itself to another house. So we are up against the Bezos and Elon Musk clock. Okay. Um, until that happens, I don’t think that’s top priority for those guys. We’re good. And we’re really, really good because we no longer have to be the holders of information, which is what it was pre.

You know, if you’re a top agent, you knew where the houses were and you were with the deals where you knew what the comps were. Now, everything is public, which is great. Now you just have to know people, meet people and show your value. So 20, 22 should be about, especially in this market. We’re in now low inventory.

Okay. Tough market. A United States national home. Has dipped below 1 million for the first time in history. So the tightest market, any of us have ever been in at the same time, the average price point of a house, the United States has gone up 19.6. Year over year, low inventory obviously pushes prices up.

So what does that mean? Does it mean you have to go knock on doors in 2022? Does it mean you have to enter the metaverse? Does it mean you have to start selling virtual land and sandbox? What it means is, is that you have to create and spend more time this year, creating agent relationships. Then buyer, customer developer relationships.

Those are still important, but I am telling you the key to success going forward to be how many real estate agents do you now in your industry? This is no longer a business. That’s all about you. You, you, you, you give you, you, I just want to know the clients and I’ll do deals with other agents. If I have to now it’s about how do I expand my marketplace?

How do I, how do I expand myself? How do I build a team in different territories, different towns, different cities. How do I add to my email signature that I do deals XYZ element LP because I’ve created agency relationships there. When was the last time anyone on this zoom call looked at your hot sheets, saw what deals closed yesterday, looked up the brokers that closed them and individually emailed those agents had said, congrats, great sale.

I didn’t ask for anything just said, congrats, great sale. I swear. I would bet you off. I, no one on here does that. I do that. Um, and I’ve done it for a long, long time, and it creates really strong karma and reputation of being an agents agent. We do a significant amount of referral business with other agents around the world because when all of my clients go to Florida because taxes and crime is so crazy in New York city.

And they’re squeegee guys back and there’s homelessness through the roof. I thought, what am I going to do? Complain when I can go to Florida. To, um, I can expand my agent relationships. I want to know as many agents as possible and there’s, I don’t know how many, there’s a lot of people here. Right. And people that are listen to this.

If any of you ever have a client for New York city, south Florida Hamptons luxury markets, or you have a big buyer, a big developer. And you’re like, man, what do I do? My email is Ryan at dot com. First name and last name. Super simple. I want to do as much business in the world as I possibly can, let’s do more together.

So that is my advice for 2020 to create more agent relationships, build them up, own them because other agents have inventory you don’t even know about. And they’re not telling you because you’re not their friend. You don’t know them and they will tell you, you want to be the one with the most relationships.

That’s how you’re gonna get more. Man that’s such good advice. You know, networking is going to be so important. It has been for the last couple of years and it will continue to be. So I appreciate that breakdown. Last question. I just want you to touch on the super quick, biggest changes in the real estate industry.

You were quote. And the reason why I bring this up is you were quoted, which is music to our ears here at our brokerage, because we do transact in crypto is the headline was half of all homes will be purchased with crypto. Did you say that? And why do you say that? I did say that, um, I said a lot on that interview and that’s the one thing anyone cared about.

Um, I think that, homeownership is tricky. I think currency exchange is tricky for us international home buyers to get dollars into the United States is really hard and decentralized finance has been around for a long. It became very real with the advent of PayPal. If you think back to Peter teal and the PayPal days, like PayPal was created to decentralized finance, like they were going to have their individual token.

They wanted people to buy with internet money. It never turned out to be that. Um, but that was their initial thesis. If you read zero to one by Peter teal, amazing book for anyone in here who has an entrepreneurial spirit, by the way, you know, so I we’re doing deals in crypto now and there are very well.

Um, but we are doing them and, even around all the crypto volatility, but it’s another means for people to buy anything. Right. And it it’s now it’s not going away. And so when I said that it was listen a hundred percent of my deals, right. Or 95% of our deals right now are done with, you know, with stable coin or Fiat currency.

I definitely see a world where 50%. We’ll stay in dollars. The other 50% of it could be cryptocurrency. Um, I think that’s really true more than that though. I see contract, title and documentation moving to the blockchain in the form of, we’re not going to call them this, but in the form of what we now know is NFTs, um, because it blows my mind that.

The process of buying and selling a home hasn’t really changed since like 1940. Like we still signed contracts, whether you sign it on DocuSign or Panda doc, right on your phone, woo-hoo, it’s still a PDF or a piece of paper that could be forged that could be screwed with. It could be lost. That could be deleted.

And there’s no record of it. It’s just like in, in five years, like having this is going to be like that movie water. With Kevin Costner, where it’s going to be like, why is that? Um, and because out of pure safety and control, right? But the blockchain is what enables you to. Um, as technology anyway is, is, is, is record keeping and data, um, that is public in the public domain and that’s important.

And I think that’ll change or at least dictate in, in a way the process of buying and selling homes, the way we work with it. And so we’re just trying to get ahead of it as best as we. Yeah, very cool. It’s an interesting discussion. And listen, I want to thank you very much for such a fascinating conversation this morning.

So good to get your perspective on branding and marketing and personal development. Of course, great stuff. Go follow Ryan. If you aren’t already, I’m assuming most of. You are following them. There, there might be one person on the call. Who’s not following it now. For details on the, branding course, how to build your personal brand.

We partnered with a Ryan’s team, their GPG ser hint.com, GPG ser hint.com for details. And if you’re on this call, you actually get a 20% discount. You got to use the code. I think it’s GPG 20 GPG, 20 for 20% discount. We worked that out with John. So, that’s that’s. Yeah. Yeah. So GPG, sir, han.com GPG 20 a to get the discount.

Thank you very much, everyone. Big round of applause for Ryan, sir. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Good to see you again, brother. Um, we’re gonna wrap up the meeting here, but thank you very much, Ryan. Appreciate your course. We’ll see you all later.