He’s a founder, entrepreneur, producer, public speaker, and best selling author. He’s the star of multiple TV shows, including million dollar listing New York and sell it like Serhant in 2020. He founded and is currently the CEO of Serhant, the rapidly growing tech forward, real estate organization comprised of two core businesses, brokerage and education.
He also just released his third book, brand it like Serhant, Ryan. It’s good to see you again. Welcome here. Thanks for having me. Sorry. I was a few minutes late. I was just finishing a, a developer pitch. So they, you know, they liked it. They took their time and talking about finishes and floor plans. So, excited to be here.
Yeah, no, no, that’s fine. and congratulations on the new book. Congratulations on the new book. No, thanks. Yeah. I keep forgetting to mention it, but Brandon lights, their hand, the greatest book ever. If you’re an entrepreneur and you care about building a brand so that you can generate leads in your sleep, then if you don’t care about any of that stuff, then You probably won’t like it.
Right. And I do want to get into the specifics of the book in just a moment, but I kind of want to ease into the conversation a little bit.
market. I know you’ve had, you know, rapid expansion in the last year, right? I think I’ve heard you quote that your goal is always to double the business you’ve done before. And now you’re in a number of states with the brokerage, correct? What feels, we’re two months into 2024, what feels different about this year than last year?
Oh, well, the beginning of 2023, it felt like, wait, where’s, where all the buyers go? Where’s all my sellers? Wait, what, what’s happening? it was a brutal Q1, then things picked up a little bit, then it was a brutal Q4. I think, you know, if you look at all the, the public, real estate brokerages that are, you know, have been reporting Q4, Earnings like they are just destroyed.
CEOs are being fired left and right. It’s, you know, it’s a, it’s a battle out there for business. The beginning of this year is knock on wood so far. So good. I think there’s an, there’s incredible opportunity. out there right now. And I think you just have to make the decision in your brain, either as a salesperson, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a team lead.
And you have to say, okay, I made it through 2023, the slowest housing market in 30 years. We lived, I’m here. I have my health mostly. I’m 2024 as the year of opportunity, or I’m going to look at it as the year of volatility. And you got to pick a choice. You got to pick one. You don’t get to sit around and say, Oh, let’s see what happens in the marketplace anymore.
I think that is, that’s not how I, that’s not how business works. You’re picking a direction. Just like if you’re sailing in a boat, right? You pick the horizon and you stick to it. If you don’t. Every wave that hits you, you’re turning the wheel. You’re like, Oh God, no, there’s a big wave. We’re going to capsize, but you capsize because you turn the wheel.
You don’t capsize because of the wave. You capsize because you hinder, you enter into wave number two, the wrong direction because you didn’t stick to the horizon that you pick for yourself as a boat. There is only one horizon, but you as a salesperson entrepreneur, you pick that horizon. and so that’s how I feel.
And, and, and, 2024. I mean, personally, there’s a lot of great stuff going on too. I need to sleep more. That’s for sure. I like, yeah, I don’t know. I can get detailed with you. Maybe on the wrap up there. Now, to that point, though, I heard a quote of yours that I thought was super profound when you were talking about 2023 and you’re illustrating it there, but markets don’t dictate your outcome.
They only dictate your strategy. I love that so much because it’s such an important message for agents to understand. Can I’m pack that a little bit? Yeah. Everything else is just an excuse. So I, I can sit here and I can say, listen, we, we didn’t hit our goals in 2023 because of interest rates, rates went up.
They hit 8 percent last year, global turmoil. Okay. and that’s true. And there are certain instances, there are terrorist attacks, there are, there are global weather changes that affect our, that can affect us deeply, right? or I can say, gotcha. But those things are always going to happen. Good things are always going to happen and bad things are always going to happen.
Someone’s always going to win. So why not me? Like why, why can’t 2024 be my greatest year ever? Are rates going to be materially higher than they are right now? Probably not. Could they be? For sure. Are they going to be materially lower? Probably not. Could they be? Sure. In the United States, we know one person is going to win the presidential election and we know exactly what we’re going to get, whoever it’s going to be.
So I could complain about it or I can say the market is what the market is and I’m going to use it to dictate my strategy. And I bring that up because most of our, the majority of our agents now are not in New York City where I’m based. And when I first started the company and for the first 12 years of my career, it was, I was a New York city based real estate agent.
We were doing about a billion dollars in sales a year until I left and started my own thing. A 95 percent of that business was based in New York city today. 60 percent of my agent count is outside of New York city. And a lot of times they say, well, for the last Last five years, you know, I, my main market for the last three years, my main market has been people coming out of the Northeast and buying up homes left and right.
It’s been great. Okay. Well, COVID is over. Rates are higher. Maybe not. Everyone in New York city wants to buy a house in the Appalachian mountains. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe what was your market like in 2016, 15, 18. Let’s look at the last 10 years and say, this is how we’re going to predict the future. The future is going to be bright.
but it’s probably going to be less volume than what you’re used to over the last three years. So that’s okay. So let’s not complain about it. Let’s not make an excuse. Let’s think about other things we can do, right? What is moving? Is commercial moving? Because those loans are resetting. And you actually realize that you have a lot of lender friends that work in commercial more than in residential and maybe there’s deals you can get in, get in on.
Is, is the rental market, whatever it might be. Don’t let the market dictate your outcome. Just let it dictate your strategy. And the strategy will let you move towards the outcome you want to get to. Yeah, love it. and further to that, here’s another quote. You said, drop the ego, drop the idea that you’re better than you were yesterday.
No job is too big or too small. Pivot, work hard. You have no inventory, go get it. I love this. And the reality is you can only automate the process of prospecting, connecting and following up with leads and clients to a point, right? You can only do that to a point, but then you have to put the work in, right?
And that’s something that you are known for and that’s relentless follow up. You’re known for this. Right. So I need your thoughts on how important that was for you to grow your brand. And what should agents understand about that? I mean, so I’m looking out my window right now. I’m on the corner of Broome and West Broadway for anyone that knows New York city, it’s kind of the epicenter of the Soho neighborhood, lower Manhattan.
There’s like a building, one building up that you probably can’t see through my window. It’s like that way. And, 2017. I took a guy there, showed him a penthouse up there for like six minutes, and he bought it for 16 million. And that sounds great and easy without context. Context is, is that I met that guy in 2012 and it took me five years of follow up to get him to a point where one day when he was ready, he reached out to me and said, what’s that thing?
Let’s go see it. Sorry. Been a little busy. For five years. I want to control as much as I can control as possible, right? Like I, I can’t worry about the things I can’t control. Why would I worry about interest rates? Why would I worry about the weather? Like, why worry about the stock market? The price of crypto.
Why worry about these things? I don’t have that kind of power. Like I don’t control any of that stuff, but I can control my, my interactions with potential customers and clients. I can control my lead gen every day. I can control what I look like when I show up to an appointment and I’m excited because I understand that selling is the transfer of enthusiasm more than it is anything else.
I can control all of those factors to help me get To what I’m really working for, which is not the buyer or the seller. It’s the deal. And I work for the deal. The deal pays the bills. and so I followed up with that guy as an example for five years, every other week without fail is free. I mean, you pay for your mail anyway.
I, I send a text probably two, three times a year, max. everything else I do over email because you know, most people in my market, you have to understand where your, where your market is and meet people where they are. You know, if your consumer is relatively young, you’re probably meeting them. Over, over social and talking to them over social.
They’re in their DMS all day long, right? Or text. if they’re international, they’re typically on WeChat or WhatsApp. If they’re, you know, middle aged and they’re in finance or any other industry, they’re probably over email, right? Or their phone, they like the phone. So that guy was an email guy and I just stayed in touch with him and it was never, I never asked him for anything.
I follow up with him for five years was always a give forever. I’m always just giving information. That’s it. And it’s super easy and do it every other week. It’s not that hard. And the reason I did it for so long is because I also kept track of him. For any VIP client that I think is, is like successful or a good person, I set up a Google alert.
So I get that email every day from Google about all news alerts, you know, and he’s a big finance guy and I would just keep track of his business. Google just tells me what it is. And so then I would see things like, Oh, his business The company just went and bought some other company. That’s my follow up.
Hey, congrats on the M& A deal for Nabisco or whatever the heck they did. Here’s a cool three bedroom in Tribeca. That’s it. You know, send him interesting things, interesting news articles, top stuff, all that, because I knew that one day maybe he was going to buy from me or he was going to die. Not from me.
Maybe that’s not a good way to say it, but you follow up until they buy or die. That’s what I’m trying to say. And, and you always follow up with value. Just giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, right? And you’re hooking them, trying to hook them and hook them and hook them. I have a thousand stories about follow up, but follow up, follow through, follow back.
That’s my, those are my three Fs. That’s how I’ve operated. That’s our secret sauce at the end of the day. And then on top of that, you build brand so that people know who’s following up with them, right? You have to have that brand awareness, that brand attention and brand is. His reputation, right? And brand starts as all of us are salespeople here, brand starts with core identity.
Like what I put in the book, what we teach in, in this ourselves, I started him pro program is really understanding what your core identity is, which for, I guess everyone here is in real estate, right? Yep. So real estate and what, like, what is your end? Your end is what? And pick one, just pick one. You can have a hundred of them.
That’s fine. I like being overachiever lucky you, but just pick one. Pick one and attach yourself to it. You are real estate and kayaking. You are real estate and coffee. You’re real estate and kids. Whatever you think that you are passionate about, right? What’s that passion commerce? Because selling roofs not like not that exciting.
It’s a job. Okay, but the career is in that and. So that and helps you build that core identity. That core identity then leaves your fingertips as you’re typing and texting and emailing and tweeting and Instagramming. It leaves your mouth as you’re talking, you’re at networking events, you’re at the coffee shop, you’re at your kid’s soccer game, you’re doing a selfie video for open house Sundays.
And as it leaves your fingers and leaves your lips, that core identity then becomes your the perception that world has of you. So it goes core identity to perception, right? It’s how the math works. And then when you leave, you turn your phone off or you leave the room, that perception then turns into reputation.
Okay. Reputation, like a pot of water boils over time. And when it boils, that’s what brand is. Right. And a watched pot never boils. It takes forever because you’re staring at it. You’re like, well, water doesn’t take this long to boil. It’s like you stare at water as it tries to freeze. You’re like, this is, I can’t, you know, you can’t.
And then you turn around and you come back and it’s frozen. Same thing with brand. And you do that math over and over and over again, and you stay consistent. And then you shout every single success you have humbly from the mountaintops, and you will build a brand that generates leads for you in your sleep.
Nah, it’s fantastic. What a breakdown and so much to unpack there. I mean, five years of follow up, five years of follow up, right? That’s relentless follow up. So, I mean, there’s lessons in that 16 million deal, right? Was it worth it? Yes. And of course, the lifetime value of a client. We all know about that.
which is, this is a great lead in to the book. Right? again, you just drop the new book, brand it like Sirhant. I’m glad you wrote this book and I’m glad we’re talking about branding. I mean, we’re obsessed with, with brand here. The writeup to the book says brand is everything and good branding is what makes the difference between dreams that are crushed to rubble and dreams that become your reality.
So what inspired you? That’s what it says. What inspired you, to write the book and what can we expect if we read it? What inspired me to write it? I, you know, it took me two years, so it took me the past roughly two years. And we spend a lot of time in our, our pro brand program, teaching people how to build their brands so they can generate leads and get off Zillow.
Right. Stop, stop with the blue sheets, stop paying for leads. That’s right. As we work with like 22, 000 real estate agents in 128 countries now, and we teach them how to do this so they can stop buying cold leads. cause it’s tiring, it’s exhausting and it also like cold calling and buying leads feels like a 1999 activity, and today’s day and age.
So how do you get those leads to come to you? Right? How do you build a business that has more inbound than you do outbound? And the way to do that today, right, is you have to build a brand that gets people coming to you. And it’s not that hard. You just have to do the work. And so we’ve been teaching this to people all over the world.
It’s like, you know what? I’m going to take our, our brand strategy, you know, and I think that what we teach is super one on one and it’s bespoke and we basically just give everything to, you know, our agents that work with us. But, you know, in the book, it’s like, okay, so if you want to do it by yourself, here, here’s the steps and here’s how you do it.
that’s my, that’s my first answer to like what inspired me to write it. Because I also think that higher education over the past 20 years has started to go like this. And I think that, according to a U S department of labor statistic. Five years ago. So 2019, 23 percent of taxpayers in the United States were filing at 1099.
Today it’s 36 percent by 2027. It’ll be over 50%. of every taxpayer in the United States alone filing a 1099, whether they have a W 2 or not, that means they’re selling something, a service, something, some kind of independent contractor income. Okay. Which means that as higher education goes like this, right?
Because education is all about outcome. Like you, you know, I guess there are some people who are just naturally wealthy, who are like, I want to go to Harvard just to say, I went there. Most people go to get the degree For the promise of a better life and a higher paying job, like that’s, you go, you’re outcome focused, right?
So as that outcome in higher education has just steadily declined, the increase in gig workers, salespeople, just like us. Right across industries has increased and in two and a half to three years It’s going to come like this and they these people are not being taken care of These people are being taken care of way too much.
These people have been totally left behind In which case, we’ve got to find our own communities, just like, you know, talking, working with you, you know, working with you, working with me, working with different people. We’re all like, we’re, we’re very, very, very lonely, but then very community focused. And we, we got to learn somewhere.
And so, you know, I wrote my first book, Salt Like Sargent. for, for the lonely sales person, really, you know, here’s how to sell, how to follow up. Here’s how to do everything you need to do. Go build a sales career, go make more money. And then during COVID, I wrote big money energy, which is then how do you take those sales tools and actually have the confidence to use them?
How do you project yourself to be you two years from now? How do you do that? How do you walk into the room with confidence? And then this is kind of the, the wrap up to my sales trilogy. I think it’s the. The best book I’ve written, took me way too long to write, is so much work and I will never, ever, ever do it again.
So you should read it, especially if you’re a sales service industry, right? Like, like real estate, when you can generate the inbound phone calls because of an ad you place, or because they know your brand, that’s the gold standard. That’s what we’re looking for, right? So that’s really important. The book is not just for agents.
I always say, you know, real estate agents are entrepreneurs. So it is for entrepreneurs and business builders as well. You also had a real life example in the book, correct? That you followed. And I think this is key because, you know, branding books, they’re not always written by. People that have built a brand from the ground up you have you have so it’s kind of cool They’ll like run through it from the ground up and then have a real life example in the book I see why it’s so much work.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, I Again, I wrote my first book in 2018 It’s out like surhant for like my team basically like local real estate agents Cuz I was sick and tired of repeating myself It’s like, God damn it. This is what you do. Here you go. And then I expanded upon that and we made a TV show out of it and all that stuff.
And then, you know, in our education program, we have so many people around the world don’t sell real estate. But they come to us and they want to learn from us. They want to build the brands of their, whatever their business is. And I think there’s so many salespeople, whether you’re in mortgages, selling mortgages, you’re selling loans, selling real estate, you’re selling insurance, you’re selling software, you’re selling bicycles.
Dude, in our program. So if we have someone who sells, surgical services in Mumbai, we have someone who sells advertisements for formula E. Race cars in South Korea. There are, we have people who sell manhole covers, the things on the streets that take you to the sewer, to municipalities. I’m like, that’s a busy, I guess so.
I guess someone, I guess someone has to sell those to someone, like, I guess every time there’s a new road, right? unless you’re in the country, I don’t know. And so, the real life example that we follow in the book is, her name is Sydney Sherman. She actually works with me. She does my, my customer, relationship management for me, and everything.
And so, but on her real passion is not. her real passion is, is fitness. She’s she loves fitness. She likes making fitness relatable, right? She’s she, she like really does the opposite of like the. The, the fit fluencers and like the, Hey, just do this, this spaghetti noodle workout and you’re going to look like me.
And here’s the transformation photo. And you’re like, I think I might hurt myself doing that. She, she’s really, really relatable and wanted to build a brand from scratch. So as I was writing the book, she was like over my shoulder and asking questions. I’m like, you know what? I want to track your process.
Everything I put in this book, I want you to do. As you build, and her business is Self by Sid, S Y D, and it’s her training business and her, her coaching business and I think it was really fun to be able to watch how she in that business takes everything that I talk about, mostly from a real estate perspective.
Brain and level of experience and puts to use. And it’s been super cool to see even like the, like I have a chapter on how to get PR, how to work with a publicist in 2024 and beyond how to get articles written about you, how to get in that way, how to be a thought leader, especially if you don’t want to be, you know, out there with your face.
If you want to be super, super private, that’s okay. It’s okay. You don’t have to be a dancing monkey like me, right? You can be that thought leader, you know, that person that everybody knows and everyone wants to talk to. But man, you got to know her in person and she’s getting like articles written about her now quoted alongside some of like the biggest fitness players in the world.
It’s pretty crazy. And so I just make sure she says thank you to me every day. Yeah, I would. very, it sounds amazing. Sounds very, very cool. you can get the book at brandatlikesurhent. com, I believe, right? Brandatlikesurhent. com. yeah. additionally, you’ve, you’ve also developed the Surhent brand strategy system, right?
Which is a formula that you still follow and use today, which includes number one, reaction. Number two, celebrity. positioning. Number three, consistent content. And number four is third party validation. I think I got that. And the goal of that is to generate leads, of course, generate more leads, right? You know, without getting into like, you know, full breakdown of the inner workings and details of all that, if you had to simmer it down to a couple of questions and answers, what should agents be doing every day?
What’s their goal? What should be their goal every day? I mean, your number one goal as a salesperson is to generate new business. That’s your goal. Right? There’s, there’s a system that I follow called finder, keeper, doer, where, you know, part of your day, you’re finding new business. And then the rest of your day, you’re keeping the business you have, and then you’re doing the work that the business is requiring of you.
You do not exist unless you find that business. If you’re not finding business every day, then you are running a company without a CEO. Like you have a company, you have a, you’re running a, you have a chicken without a head. Like that’s, and it can work, it might bump into some walls, but eventually you die.
That’s just how it, it’s how it works. and so you’ve got to find that business every day. And so the reason we, I push branding so much is because it’s so possible today. 10 years ago, it was much, much, much harder. 20 years ago, probably impossible for most of us. Like what outlets did we have? A few and far between which made getting into those outlets so incredible, which is why it was for the few and far between today, you know, I launched a building yesterday, right?
We announced a building yesterday. It’s the first Mercedes Benz residences in North America ever. It’s in Miami. The sellout is 1. 4 billion U. S. It’s 791 units. You would think, Like, New York Times, like Miami, CNN, new TV, everything, a building like that. Didn’t give a press exclusive to anybody. Because we don’t need it anymore.
Any Instagram post is a press exclusive. A blog post is a press exclusive. It gets picked up, right? A TikTok video about it is a press exclusive. Now, even if you have one follower, it is, it’s you putting information out there in public. So, so how do you do that? And how do you build that up? So you can generate that business.
and you don’t have to have a TV show to do it, right? You, you actually, you know, I tell people all the time, like, yeah, well, I know you were on a TV show for 10 years. Like, Sure, because that was what was important for me 10 years ago. Today, if you came to me and said, listen, I need you to film a TV show for 10 years, it’s going to take up two thirds of every day for 10 years.
It would be hard for me to tell you as a salesperson that it would be worth it because there’s so much noise out there and what’s most beneficial is the organic awareness to you as a human being and you can do it in your phone, you know? And what you think is boring? It’s what someone else thinks is unique and relatable.
That’s how they say like one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. It’s the same thing for, for creating content and creating brand awareness. The fact that you love singing along to that same song every Saturday before an open house Transcribed You might think it’s awkward and weird and just your thing, but to somebody else, that’s awesome and gold.
I want to see what song you’re going to sing this Saturday. And I want to give you recommendations on different songs. Hey, Tony’s, you know, it’s Tony’s open house days. He picks a different song from his audience. He does a Twitter poll on it. All of a sudden, you are real estate and freaking social open, open mic on Saturday mornings.
I don’t know. I just invented that for the last 10 seconds. It’s like there’s so much opportunity now. You just have to try. And I would rather regret the things I did than the things I never tried. Right? Just move, move fast. You know, it’s like, what is it? It’s like, I can’t remember exactly the phrase, but it’s, it’s, you know, you want to move fast, fail fast, fix fast, all that stuff.
What’s the worst that’s going to happen? No one watches it. Okay. No problem. The only one who cares is you. By the way. What did Wayne Gretzky say? You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take. You don’t take. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It’s facts. The most true in dating, you know. If I could go back in time, Dave, the things I would do differently.
Well, listen, Ryan, you know, you, you touched on it, when it comes to marketing, branding, social media strategies. What are you seeing your most successful agents doing when it comes to branding and marketing? Like what platforms are they on? How often are they posting? I mean, you’re touching on it, but is there, I mean, there’s no specific formula, but what are you seeing the most successful agents doing?
So it depends on, on that agent’s like identity. So I have young agents who are in their early twenties. They are not experienced yet enough to, to form like strong opinions yet about things. So what draws you into them and what makes you want to work with them is their personality. Right their look like I have an agent who’s 22 who I swear I swear to you came off a time machine.
He looks like he was from the 70s the way he dresses His thing is tiktok. I don’t think he even understands what life is like without tiktok Like I don’t think he would I don’t even know if he’d be in real estate It’d be like me going back in time and there used to be a website or maybe there still is called Craigslist.
Like I don’t, I didn’t know how to get business if it was not for posting ads on Craigslist. Like that was just, I don’t know, what else would I have to, what else do I do? But it depends. Like you are either leaning into your personality or you’re leaning into your opinions or ideally you have both, you know, but if you don’t, it’s okay.
The opinions make you a thought leader. And those people are Rush it on LinkedIn, LinkedIn, and Twitter, just LinkedIn and Twitter. And you gotta be consistent. Others are Tik TOK, Instagram. Obviously YouTube shorts are big right now. I’ve yet to meet anyone who says, Hey, I get all my business from Snapchat or from threads or from any of the others.
Those are kind of like your, your, your big ones that I’m seeing. And then good old fashioned email, like a great newsletter. That is actually worthwhile that you spend time on that isn’t just templated that you send out because you were told by some guy that you have to have a newsletter. No one wants to, if you don’t want to read it and it’s your own, then no one else does.
It’s like, what are you doing? You know, it’s like, it’s if you wouldn’t hang out with yourself. Then you can’t be mad when no one else wants to hang out with you. So, like, have a newsletter that’s actually worthwhile. Like, ours, you know, I call it Selects. I’m so bored of, like, these elongated newsletters and just stuff.
So I’m going to get Selects. Like, here’s my top ten thoughts and articles that I think are interesting. And they’re not all real estate based. Like, there’s random stuff that are interesting. And I get more engagement on that than any newsletter I’ve done in 15 years. A hundred percent. Yeah. Newsletters are big right now.
Newsletters are huge. I think every agent team, I mean, like you should be, you should have a newsletter. If you don’t have a newsletter, you need to make one. That should be your goal this year if you don’t have one. Cause you know, again, the lifetime value of a client, if you’re not in front of them when they are ready to make, you know, a decision.
On a purchase or sale, you know, you’re not going to get the deal, right? So you need to be in front of them. Underestimate email, as Ryan said there. Listing tactics. What are you seeing the best agents do for effective listing generation tactics? The reason why I ask this is because inventory is very low in a lot of places.
Right. So how can agents get more listings in the current environment? I think it’s easier today than it was a year, I mean, two years ago. I think that there’s a lot of people that should have moved last year and in 2022 that just didn’t. And now what are you going to do? You’re going to die there, or are you actually going to move on with your life?
Could rates go up? Sure. Could they go down? Sure. But we can kind of all predict the next six months of life right now, it seems like. and that’s all you need for consumer confidence. And so a lot of our agents, honestly. are going back to basics. Doesn’t matter how successful they’ve been, they’re going back to basics.
They’re having, they’re doing, they’re going back, they’re like going door knocking. They’re, they’re reaching out to people, right? They’re doing mailing campaigns, they’re dropping off gifts again, like they’re doing all the things they used to do when they first started, and they’re doing them again because no one does them.
No one does them. Everyone is just trying to generate leads on social or networking or they’re just buying them so you don’t have to deal with it. No one is actually putting in the back to basics pounding the pavement work. And if you’re the only one that’s doing it, Then you, your chances of success are so much higher.
So we’ve seen a lot of that, obviously, you know, for us, our agents are very brand focused. They spend a lot of time in education, investing in themselves. They’re members of sell like Sirhan, they are part of the webinars. They’re engaging with other agents for referrals to, I’ve seen that be a big thing right now, really being a part of your agent to agent community because the real estate agency business is like the biggest agency business in the world.
Cause we all kind of need each other. Like doctors don’t really need other doctors, right? we need each other. I need you to have that listing because I have a buyer and I don’t know what to sell him. I need you to do it. And so really, really working and building up those agency referrals has been a huge part of how a lot of our agents have been generating so much business.
And I only know that because I see all the referral payments going out. I’m like, Jesus Christ, all these referral checks that we’re sending out. It’s like, Oh, well, I guess that’s how you got those 10 deals. because you are. Mixing and mingling with agents in Toronto and Montreal and Utah and Mexico and, you know, being a part of those groups digitally is, is fine too.
Like being a part of your community, right? Being a part of ours, being, being on the ground and being out there. I think if anyone has a question about what to do right now, it’s back to basics. If this was day one in the career, zero clients, what would you do? You always have that to fall back on. There should never be a, I didn’t do any business this week.
The answer is always, well, I’m sure you got things going your first week in the business, right? It was probably crazy. You were probably stressed out and maybe you talked to some strangers. Maybe you did an initial email out to your database saying, Hey, I’m in real estate now. What was the last time you did that?
And actually made it personal and not a newsletter. What was the last time you actually went and went to the local coffee shop and said, Hey, how many people can you meet? See how many emails you can get, make a game out of it. Take an agent partner of yours, a friend, and say, Hey, let’s make a game. I’ll give 10 to the person who can generate more cold business today.
Just go for it. Just to see. But it can’t be over the phone or over text. It has to be in person. Really awkward. Let’s go. See what happens. I swear to you, you will change your life this year if you behave that way. A hundred percent. And, you know, agents should love writing referral checks. I think That means you’re doing deals, right?
So the more referrals and more business you’re doing, and again, lifetime value of a client.
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What’s the biggest mistake you see agents making right now not doing the work Not doing the work man. Like it’s supposed to be hard. I’ll just say it that way Like this business is supposed to be hard It’s why you’re not paid hourly, or at least I’m not. I don’t know, maybe you guys are. it’s supposed to be hard.
Just understand that. It is supposed to be hard. That’s why it’s hard. Like, that’s why the opportunity is so high. Great risk comes great reward. Like, you, like, you don’t have to do anything else. Like, you don’t have to go study the markets and take massive risk with your own capital every day. You know, you don’t have to go to medical school for 10 years, like you don’t have to do all these things that other people have had to do to make incomes.
You just get to do sales, right? But to do that and to make it work, it’s going to be really hard until you start to build up that momentum. So that’s what I’ve worked so hard on. I’m giving back as much as I can. Like, I don’t want to write books to make money. I don’t, like, you know how much money I lose writing books?
Cost per hour. I don’t do education to make money. Like, I sell real estate. I run a big business. I do this because, like, what is my, what’s my legacy? Like, Okay. Other than giving money away, how do I, how do I help people that I think could make our entire industry better? All right, well, here’s everything I know.
And I think the number one mistake is that agents just don’t do the work. They don’t, they’re not goal oriented. They stop and start a lot. They’re hot on Monday, but they’re cold by Friday. They don’t. Take care of the work, which is super important because when you take care of the work, the work takes care of you.
Like I don’t actually wake up every day thinking about money and commissions and sales prices. I wake up every day thinking about generating business. Cause I know if I generate business today, it’ll take care of me. It’ll turn into listings. It’ll turn into buyers. I will service those people the same way I always have.
That’s my keeper part of the deal, right? Finder, keeper, doer. I’ll do the work and it’ll close and I’ll make money because I I started on page one of my book. my book of life, right? Just generating business and taking care of that work. Fantastic. You heard him do the work, do the work. we’re going to ask a wrap up question here, but before we do that, I do want to get your perspective on this because this is subject that everybody in the industry is talking about right now, the industry, not necessarily the public, but we recently had, we just had Tom Ferry on and we did a deep dive on the legal challenges, the lawsuits and the commission structure conversations.
that are taking place, right? Every agent’s talking about this. They’re a little worried, right? It kind of rattled the industry, the lawsuits, right? They’ve made significant headlines. I think the first one was 1. 8 billion judgment. I think in Missouri, they included a handful of brokerages. and of course that sparked more lawsuits.
So with the ongoing, legal challenges surrounding agent commissions. What conversations are you having with agents about this? Like what are you advising agents? You have to understand your value proposition. Like if the business is going to change, if you’re eventually going to have to work with a buyer and have them sign off on your fee before you show them anything.
In some markets we do that already and in most markets we just don’t. You have to understand how to make that pitch. So the same way, listen, go back to before you were ever in real estate ever. You had to learn how to pitch for sellers. Why would any seller hire you? So, it’s page one, stay one. Okay, how would you pitch a buyer?
Why work with you? If you can’t answer that for you, how, how should anybody else answer that for you? You got your three big reasons why people should hire you on a sell side? You should understand really clearly, other than I know how to use the internet, what your three big reasons for working with you on the buy side are.
What are they? And just write them down, and just know them, internalize them. So I think the lawsuits are just make the business a little bit more transparent. I guess, honestly, what’s probably what they’re probably going to do is make attorneys a significant amount of money, unfortunately, and push a lot of the business into the hands of less salespeople.
The way the system has been set up for so long, is it detrimental to clients? I don’t think so because you end up paying the fee only once and it always gets passed on. Like when you’re buying a place, the seller pays it. And then when you go and sell it, you pay it. Yeah. It’s how it works, right? So it’s, otherwise you’re paying fees on every single trend.
So you’re potentially going to be paying more fees now, right? Because now they’re not, they’re not saying what commission should be, should it be 1 percent a hundred percent? What should they be? They’re just saying sellers should be responsible for their, for paying their agents. Buyers should be responsible for paying theirs.
So in a down market, I’m a seller’s agent come through and say, yeah, my fee is 6%. Just to me. And then when I help you to buy, it’s 3%. So now I’m making 9 percent where I used to make 6, but at least those attorneys got paid. And what it’s really going to do is the salesperson that can effectuate that value proposition.
To get that 9%, right? They’re going to push so many other hardworking salespeople out of the market because they’re just not going to be smart enough or have the experience enough or have the wherewithal enough to explain why they should get paid. So you got to get to work right now on why you understand why you build your brand.
Like the number one, I don’t, I’m not here to sell books. I just like, I believe in it so strongly. I’m so passionate about like if you don’t want to fall by the wayside and be pushed out of this business. You need to be recognized for your business. People have to know why you and you have to build your brand that way.
Because if it starts to get tough, when my number one thing, when I sit with buyers, okay, well, why should I pay you? Cause I’m Ryan sir. Oh, right. We’ve heard of you. Gotcha. Okay. Brand awareness. Got it. And it’s not because of TV, right? It’s because of like YouTube and the internet and my newsletter. It’s because of my success.
Everything else. If you can’t say that, then you got to get to work on that right now. And that’s how you’re going to actually make more money because I’m telling you a lot of other people and maybe most of the people on this zoom podcast right now are going to say, yeah, that’s hard. It’s too hard. I’m not going to do it.
Okay. Great. Everybody else. It’s like, okay, awesome. I know what to do. You just, you just took all those people’s business. So like, you’re already ahead. You’re already winning. Listen, what Ryan just broke down there, I hope everybody’s paying attention, the importance of unique selling propositions, value propositions, differentiators.
Why is someone picking up the phone and calling you? You, we, we’ve been screaming this every week, guys, you know that, right? What are your USPs, right? Why are people using, why are they paying you? Right. And it also comes down to communication as well. Thank you very much for your thoughts on that. I appreciate it.
Wrap up question here, Ryan. You’re opening a bottle of champagne one year from now, celebrating something you’ve accomplished. What would that be? probably because I’m, I’m as healthy in a year that I am today. I said, you know, I do definitely feel older. The older I get, you know, they say like in 10 years from now, you’re going to wish you felt this tired.
You’re going to wish you did. I feel that man, like I’m in a standing desk right now because I’ve got compression in my L5 S1 and my spine. Like what, what ridiculous. but I think I’m also excited in a year. if we have, you know, I think we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re on our way to a thousand agents at Surhant.
So, if we have passed a thousand in a year from now, so that gives me, 12 months to do it. I think that would be, I don’t know, a thousand good ones. Not bad ones. Ah, what a bottle of champagne that’ll be. But you know, I, to your point, I, I just saw an interview with Kobe Bryant and it, and it stuck with me.
It’s such a simple phrase. He said, rest at the end. Right, like rest at the end, you know, work hard and rest at the end. You’d like to be, like you said, you’d be thankful you were this tired, right? so I think that’s a great phrase. I think you gotta be careful. I, you know, I, I used to really feel that way.
and I still do. I think I still operate that way for better or for worse. Even race cars need pit stops. It makes them go faster. So I’d rather speed stop, speed, stop, speed, stop, then just speed. And one big stop. And I think you’ve, you’ve got to be appreciative of the endurance. I think endurance for the win.
How do you build up that endurance? It’s not like you’re not Forrest Gump. You didn’t go for a run and then never stop. Right. You, you. You want to be the person who can run the furthest. You want to be the person who can run the fastest, right? You got to approve. That’s why I have like data days. Like for, for us in my market, our open houses and work days are Sundays.
so Saturday, like you go through the whole week, it’s mass insanity. Saturday is data day with my daughter on Saturdays. And I’m telling you that day is probably more exhausting than any work day. I have like, I don’t have to negotiate. I mean, I do negotiate with her, but not like not about dollars, you know, kids are the best negotiators.
Kids are the best negotiators, I think. Dude, they’re the best at the takeaway. The best at the takeaway. They play for keeps, right? The answer is just no, they don’t give a sh You know? She’s like, alright, what are you gonna do? You gonna kick me out? Huh? I’m your only kid. I’m your daughter. I’m your prize and joy.
And I’m like, God! Why do you know me so much? Yeah. Facts. Anyways, Ryan, Thank you so much for joining us today. I know your time is very valuable, what an insightful conversation. Very valuable. thanks again. Always the best man. Super engaging. I really appreciate your, your thoughts today.
Thank you again. Of course. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. Discount code. Discount code. 20%. Oh yeah. Damn. I forgot that too. I forgot. Hold on. Hold on. Listen, there’s a discount code for SellItLikeSirHint. com. You get 20 percent off with the code GPG. There you go. I did it. Yes, I got it. GPG is the code.
20 percent off. I got it, too. Change your life. Let’s go. Come work with me. Come work with me. Learn from me. Go buy the book. Yeah, I’m excited to, go through it. I haven’t gone through it yet. But anyways, thank you so much, Ryan. Take the rest of the day off. Take the rest of the day off. Damn it. I’ll get right on that.
Thanks a million. Yeah, see ya.
