#106 Sales Expert: 3 Ways To Get A YES Every Time | Ryan Serhant

27:19That's interior designers, contractors, attorneys. We were just talking about divorce attorneys, right? Estate attorneys and so on. Those people have a shared commercially aligned interest with what we do. And so the way to get to the bullseye isn't to go to the bullseye and sit there and say, hey, come work with me. It's to get to the people where you have a commercially aligned interest, and then you can have share of trust while getting to share of wallet. And we teach salespeople to do that. It is not easy, but once you learn how to create those conversations and build those relationships, you can build an uncapped life.

27:59It's incredible. It's why I really like that you have the education company, because I know everybody thinks that education has a sheen on it. They think if you could do, you do, and if you can't do, you teach. But I think it's a real gift to give people the secrets that you learn over 10, 15 years of being in real estate. And so I guess in that instance, with these real estate agents that come in for you. I'm sure you have interviewed thousands and you've probably seen thousands across the years. What are like the top 1 % do and that maybe even the 99 % would think is unreasonable? The top 1 % of salespeople just don't quit.

28:40It's the only way to be in the top 1%. Hard work trumps luck when luck doesn't work hard. and so they just show up day in and day out they understand their job is to lose and slowly but surely the wins start to outpace the losses and then you compound and you compound they're also relentless with follow-up right and they have pretty great memories or systems and processes in place to make sure that they follow up and follow through and follow back with everything they say they're going to do with every person that they meet and they also understand too, like in negotiations, like they, they understood to do like what I just talked about in Palm beach.

29:21Like the number one negotiation tactic is silence. Silence is violence. There's nothing that drives a wealthy person crazier than not responding. And I see it with me. There is nothing that drives me crazier than when Danny doesn't respond to my text messages. Like I just lose my mind with everybody that works for me that doesn't respond in time. And I know my clients are the same way because when they want something, they want it. How dare you not respond? So you have to respond in real time or don't go get another job. Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, I think the richer you are, the faster you move on average.

29:58And the one thing I've always found with knowing as many billionaires as we've gotten to know over the years is like they're just faster than anybody imagines. I think a lot of times people think they're always smarter. I'm not sure that's always the case, but like they don't waste time at all. And you've actually talked about this. You've talked about how like you can't get some of your billionaire clients on the phone. They're like, the thing is I don't get on the phone. Yeah. And so do you have any weird quirks like that? Like, will you not do voice notes? I like, I like, uh, you know, um, Andreessen, Mark Andreessen's comment of like voice notes are violence.

30:29I think like it's a one way street. Don't give them to me. I don't want one. Um, you got anything like that? I don't send people voice notes, but I do record my own voice notes. And then I'll listen to them on the way to work. Motivational quotes? Yeah. No, I just talk to myself like, you got this, right guy. You can do it, buddy. No, just like, instead of having to type, everything I do now is voice. Our AI service is all voice. Everything is voice. And so I'll just, I'll just talk about ideas so that I just don't forget them to remind myself to put them into action. Billionaires text more than 13-year-old girls.

31:09They just do for two reasons. First reason is it saves time. And they know that if you try to get them on the phone, what are you going to do? You're just going to try to convince them. And if you can't convince them in writing, you're not good enough. So that's one. Two is so that it's in writing. So you can't go back and say, well, we talked about that. Remember when we had that conversation, we did this, we did this. They can just scroll. Anyone who has become that wealthy has gone through litigation and text messages and emails are admissible in court. And so you just always have to be careful that if you say it, right, you can forget it.

31:50If you write it, you can regret it. And incredibly wealthy people get that. Let's talk about hiring. So you're bringing a bunch of people on board. Lots of people want to work for you. I saw the office. It's amazing. You've got your Sirhant all over the sides of it. It's a cool building. You've got people lining up. How do you determine if somebody's an A player or not? Somebody should work for Ryan. I would assume you only want as many A players as you can. How can you tell? We haze them physically. Yeah. If you can't take a punch, you can't work here. You can't do that in New York. Texas, we're fine.

32:24You guys are soft. Yeah, exactly. Listen, I hire first and foremost for intelligence. If I have someone who's incredibly smart in front of me, even if they don't have the resume, if they don't have the backing, if they don't have the experience, they're just going to figure it out. And a lot of what running a startup is about is not doing things the way we used to do them, but improving on the way we're about to start doing them. And so I used to hire people for experience and I just hated it because every meeting I would go to would be talking about what they used to do. It's like someone who's, I don't know, been divorced three times.

33:07Every conversation is about an ex-wife. It's like, guy, move on. Talk about the future. And so what I like to do, especially with our executive hires, is I hire for a function and I hire for raw intelligence and I hire out of industry. If they have rideshare app operational experience, high growth tech business, they won't have any idea how to operate my business, a cloud brokerage, opening a state every month, but they'll get it. They'll figure it out. I also test for energy empathy and enthusiasm like those are my three e's and then our three key metrics Are speed quality and experience if you're not moving a little bit faster At a little bit of better quality and leaving an amazingly memorable experience then we are screwed It's a good point.

34:04Everybody has stories about their realtor and if it's a good one you get i'm sure five or ten more clients And if it's a bad one You probably get turned down 10 or 20 clients I was mostly talking about staff. I spend a lot of time thinking about payroll and the leadership team. Our leadership team now is 17 people. And I sit there, and that's an expensive group of people. Every single minute costs money. And I have this 1 ,000-minute rule that's really important to me, and I really look at time as dollars. It's the only way that I can be efficient with my time and also not waste time. What's your 1 ,000-minute rule?

34:41You have 1 ,000 minutes every day to be productive. Some people have 800 minutes. Some people have seven jobs. Some people have 10 kids. It's all different, but on average, right? You have a thousand minutes every day to be productive. If you look at those thousand minutes as a thousand dollars in your bank of time you get every day, it'll really start to affect the way you give someone 15 minutes or affect the way you start valuing your commute, for example. And I was spending so much time because I'm in sales. I have no salary. I have no benefits. You eat what you kill. There is absolutely no parade when you make$25 million a year.

35:21And there is no pat on the back when you are in bankruptcy. No one cares. You're in it to win it, okay? And so I was spending so much time meeting with people where it wasn't a benefit for me. Commuting, where it just was a complete waste of time. And I was like, how do I re-trigger my brain to think about time like money. Every day is gonna cost me, at that time when I started this, it was$1 ,000. 1 ,000 minutes, 1 ,000 bucks. If it's an hour meeting, that's 60 minutes. It also helped me deal with problems and not have bad days, right? It's like you'll have a really bad call and then you have a terrible day.

36:04But if the call was only five minutes, would I throw away$995 dollars because of five bucks? Probably not. And it's not a great analogy because you could have a bad call that could ruin your life. I mean, there's tragedies, but like it was a real way for me to think about life in a relative way that has been a major unlock for how we operate. And so I really try to put our executive team on the thousand minute rule as we go. Harvard Business Review wrote a case study on it thinking that it was the most interesting thing about me when I thought there were so many more interesting things about me.

36:39And they're like, no, you're so weird with time management and how you do so many different things. We're going to write about that. Interesting. Yeah. You know, when you were on, I think it was Million Dollar Listing, was the first show, right? You were known as like this amazing sales guy, one of the top real estate brokers, but you also had a little bit of a reputation for being tough, you know? Was that, given you were an actor before, is that like part of your personality? Is this like a persona that you put on? Or are you kind of like a tough guy while also being this funny guy and highly competent?

37:12When Millionaire Listing was created, they cast four of us on the show. And they said, we're gonna film all four of you for the first season. We're gonna spend a year making this TV show. Only three of you are gonna make the cut. I never knew that. Yep. And you think business is rough? That was emotional rollercoaster. because the producers would show up to a scene like, hey, I've got this person I wanna show this apartment to. It's gonna be great. And they would show up and they'd say, oh, this is what you have? Yeah, well, we were shooting with the other guy this morning and he had this amazing celebrity in this gorgeous penthouse.

37:49Yeah, I don't know if it's gonna work for you. And what they were doing was poking me and prodding me to make me get better and to figure things out. And I had to not just be like the white, quirky nice guy that is boring tv so if i could be the most vulnerable and have a little bit of an edge i would not get cut because i don't want to spend a year how many thousands of minutes that would be that's a lot of i would stress out and so would not write a case study on you yeah so So I kind of concocted this arc where I'm an introvert. I got into theater when I was a little kid, so I didn't have to be myself.

38:37It was much easier moving from school to school to school because I was not good at sports. I was overweight. I had rash acne and I was going gray. And I moved eight times before fourth grade to pretend to be a tree in theater after school than it was to try to go play football. And the TV show gave me an option to put on a different type of costume, right? And a friend of mine who told me to get into real estate was like, it's theater. It's the same thing. You put on a performance, you put on your suit, you memorize information, you understand the scene and you say, yes, and, right? There's some memorization, but it's yes, and.

39:17How can I help you? You want an apartment? Yes, and what about this? And, okay, what about this? And, and then you help them make a decision that they were going to make anyway, because they're going to move, except they're going to do it with you. And it was a game. And that's how we built. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it.

39:50Ready to make anything online make sense? there's no place like Chrome check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus good sleep is everything that's why Ollie's science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L-theanine for both kiddos and grownups so when your mind won't switch off you've got something that can help erasing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance find Ollie's sleep solutions for the whole family at Ollie.com that's O-L-L-Y.com So smart. It's interesting because now that I'm on the internet as much as I am, I see the showmanship everywhere, you know, and you see it in business.

40:30I mean, like famously, I was reading about Todd Graves from Raising Canes. This other person who's become a friend, David Senra, has this podcast called Founders. He talks about this game of showmanship as a leader and a CEO. So do you feel like you carry that into the CEO position or do you almost have to leave behind this character development? Like, is there a little villain in the CEO, just like there was in the million dollar listing? I think I'm way tougher as a CEO than I am as a TV agent. Yeah. You have to be because the liability is so hard. And a lot of people, you know, need to be led.

41:05People want to be led. I am a terrible manager. I hate it. It's not what I do. I have people who manage. I'm a much better leader than I am a manager. How do you see the difference between the two? What's the difference between a leader and a manager? I think that a manager does things right and a leader, right, does the right things. I think that's a Drucker quote more than anything. I think the leader picks vision and stands at the front of the line. The manager makes sure that the line follows the vision. You know, if you think about like Marcus Aurelius and that front line, and I, one of the ways I differentiate myself, at least in the real estate space, is that a lot of CEOs are in the back.

41:48They're in like a high perch paying for things, you know, and then let's see what happens. Maybe like an idiot, you know, I've got like my broad sword out, no helmet, because this could be my last battle. And I'm in the front lines on a horse, you know, marching around. I'm like, you guys better follow me because I'm going. And then they're like, I guess we're going too. And that's, that is literally, that's how we built the company. I feel like I've seen that video. Yeah, probably. We should make that video. You really should. You know, you obviously have a ton of confidence or at least projected confidence.

42:23How do you think somebody builds that? You've talked about how important it is to have confidence to sell things, to sell things to rich people. How does somebody build their confidence? One of the ways I did it was with that fake Rolex early on. I think people have a lack of confidence because they have a lack of identity. You know? one of the things that we'll do through Sell It. So sell it.com is our education business. We train salespeople in 133 countries. We've changed so many lives. And so it's insane to watch. As you sit, we say, define yourself without using your name or talking about what you look like.

43:01And it is so hard for people to do that. They're like, oh, I'm from X. It's where everyone goes. I was born in a, I'm like, okay. so just so you know, you just told me everything about you has to do with where you're from, where you're born. Really? Are you sure? Your whole life. They're like, oh, no, no, no, that's it. I have a job. They don't know how to talk about themselves. So we spend a lot of time helping people talk about their core identity. Who are you as a person? What makes you tick? If you understand who you are today, pros, cons, strengths, and weaknesses, you can then write your future memoir and go 24 months out, 24 months from today, where are you?

43:46What do you look like? Right? Where are you living? What are your best character traits? What are you watching? How much do you weigh? What are you driving? Get as detailed as you possibly can. And then that is your roadmap. And if you know that's your roadmap, you spike your own confidence because you are able to execute for a year, right? And then realize that vision for the next year. And if you do it the right way, you are that person before the 24 months are up. I want to talk about how you're stacking all these businesses now. So you start as like a real estate broker and you work for somebody else.

44:22Then you build your brokerage. Now you have your education platform as far as I can see it. You also have your SaaS company and you have this brokerage. What am I missing? And a media company? Do you separate that? Like how do you structure your holding company? What does that look like for you? Sure. So I set up Sirhan Technologies, which is a holding company whose operating companies help people move forward. And we do that by providing services that help buyers, sellers, and salespeople operate within the real estate world to make things better, faster, and cheaper. One of the ways we do that is we own a cloud real estate brokerage.

44:58That's Sirhan. It's moving incredibly quickly. And what does a cloud real estate brokerage mean? We don't have physical spaces. But you have an office. I have a clubhouse in New York City because I like it. Clubhouse. Okay. I like that. So we have a clubhouse in New York City. We call them Sirhan houses. Agents, we have Sirhan offices all over the country now. Agents open them on their behalf and they're powered by the firm. The entire firm operates in the phone. So unlike a brick and mortar brokerage. You go into Caldwell Bank or Caldwell. Yeah, which are brick and mortar or franchise operators.

45:32And franchises used to work back when people paid attention to training because you would have the vision, the brand, and you would train relentlessly so that the experience in every franchise was the exact same. The minute the training went out the window, which is what all franchise operators in the real estate brokerage space have forgotten to do, quality goes out the door and that's why all those businesses are failing. Like one by one by one. They're also aging out incredibly quickly. That would be like a Keller Williams. Yeah. So we have the cloud real estate brokerage. We then have a production company.

46:04So Surhan Studios. So we have the Netflix show, Owning Manhattan, season two, December 5th. We have all the top of funnel content, which is lead generation, organic for salespeople and people who need salespeople. That then routes in a funnel over to the brokerage, right? Our LTV to CAC is, I told you, it was six times. Six when industry was three. Yeah. Well, the industry I think is like at one. And so we're at 6.6 as a ratio over present day value, which is just like astonishing. And we do it because we don't buy revenue. And our lead flow is organic through content. And by revenue, you mean paid ads?

46:45No, by revenue through buying commissions. So like if I'm - That's normal in the industry. Yeah, of course. Just the same way it is in like a hedge fund or an investment bank. Like you have a sales team or a portfolio manager. He does 20 million a year. There's a multiple on his 20 million. You come in, you lock them up, you give them golden handcuffs. We don't do that. So everyone comes to Sirhan for opportunity and they stay for the opportunity. We then have SellIt.com, which is an operating company under the whole co. We then have Simple. Simple is an AI workflow engine that replaces all back office support.

47:17So it's like Instacart for work. And then we just spin that flywheel all day long. Fascinating. And going forward, which one do you think is the biggest or do you think that they're all so interconnected that there will be no spin outs? I think it's a public company by 2030. I think it could be spun out. Sure. I mean, I've set it up in such a way where, and we've had people come to us who only care about simple because all people care about is AI. We also have people who really just care about studios and organic lead gen content and the IP that studios has from us doing this for so long. And there's people who only understand brokerage, but we've kind of built real estate brokerage 3.0.

47:56And our average agent is young, the most diverse and inclusive real estate brokerage in the United States by far. You know, we're doubling in size every year and profitable. So like, I don't know. It's just working. That's fascinating. So how big do you want this business to be? How big do you think it will be? I don't want it to be big. I just want it to be the best. Interesting. No, come on. You don't have like a multi, multi-billion dollar valuation that you think would be fun to hit in the game at some point or no? I don't know. I probably, to the sadness of my investors, they think about valuation.

48:36I just think about being the best. Like if I could have 10 agents and sell more than any other firm, I would do it. Simple replaces a lot of admin workflow, human support, but it empowers the salesperson to do more because we buy 80 % of their day back. All admin tasks are gone. And so I don't know where we get to. I only care about winning and it doesn't have to be attached to dollars. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, I get it. I think love of the game is what gets people going after a certain dollar amount. Yeah. I think if you focus on the money, the money doesn't show up. Like when we raised money, I wasn't looking to raise money.

49:16You know, if I were looking and actively trying to go raise money, I think it would probably be hard. Don't you think like in the beginning you have to be obsessed on money, like your first 500K, your first million a year, like you kind of need to be obsessed with it. And then at some point, maybe not, or is that not true? I don't know about every other industry. It's possible in other industries. It's easy in our business to just focus on the work. and if you take care of the work, the work will take care of you. And then you wanna understand how much money you have, how much does your life cost?

49:47How much does your month cost? Like my monthly is high, right? And so I understand what the business costs, I understand what my personal life costs. I understand money, but it is not a leading indicator for me and it's not a motivating factor in determining what I wanna do. Money is just a tool. And when you treat it like a tool and not like the be all end all, then you don't put dollars on a pedestal. you just put the potential for greatness up there and it's so much more achievable. So good. How about, you've had some crazy stories about people who are, one, say they have a bunch of money, don't actually have a lot of money.

50:21So many con artists out there. Really? Yeah, insane. And they've only gotten better. Yeah, that is true. Like you can't tell. Like AI voice bankers who say they work at Goldman Sachs, who will trick you on the phone to tell you that their purchaser has all the money in the world. they submit offers and the deposit doesn't show up and they waste all your time. We have sham buyers all the time, all the time. How do you tell if somebody is serious or not? I mean, the first way to tell is to look them up online. Like if you look them up, Google them, ask chat, is this person real? Who are they? And if there's nothing there and they're looking for a$10 million home, kind of sketchy, although I will tell you, I met someone a long time ago through the internet who said they wanted to buy a place for eight and a half million dollars and they were un-Google-able, but I wasn't doing a whole lot of deals back then.

51:15And so I was like, sure, send me a proof of funds. And he DHL'd me a photo of someone in like an African headdress kind of thing. And on the back of it, just said that the purchaser's name is good for it and does not commit to things he does not commit to. I was like, I'll take it. sure no problem and he took out a contract and then disappeared for almost a year and what people told me is you know people around the world will do that because they'll they'll take a contract they'll say it's an american real estate purchase a sale contract they got it for a good deal because that home i think was on the market at 15 million at one point and slowly made it down to eight and a half and then they'll go to people and say come in on this deal with me for 10 000 come in on this for 5 ,000 for me.

52:03And they just steal money from people all around the world as they go. That guy actually did one day wire the$830 ,000 deposit, just randomly showed up one day and then totally disappeared again and then forgot to close. And then long story short, eventually showed up to close, went and bought what I'm pretty sure was a private 737 that was sitting at JFK and then came back. And it turns out, I think he clears like a billion a year in pure cash. I don't know how much he actually makes. And he controls a Delta in a very, very, very important passageway for shipping containers in a very, very important and potentially scary place.

52:47And he makes so much money that one night he was drunk and he was on Zillow and he filled out a form and I had nothing better going on. So I was just sitting in the office and I responded and I asked him at that first closing, he's bought a lot of properties since then, asked him, I'm like, why did you even buy this? He's like, to be honest, I felt bad for you. And I'm like, superpower, number one, make people feel so bad for me. They just buy the damn thing anyway. Dude, whatever it takes. 20 bucks is 20 bucks. I'm in. Yeah. Puppy dog eyes, you know, gray hair, don't care. Just move on. That's incredible.

53:29Okay. I want to close out with, I think a lot of people get overwhelmed negotiating. Obviously that's something that even Americans were not that used to. People get scared about getting steamrolled. What do you do in a negotiation to start positioning yourself like in a power position? Somebody's sitting here and they're like, I don't know, they're trying to get a raise. They're trying to interview for the next big job. They're going to the next level of the game, but they don't know how to get in the power position in negotiation. What do you do? Two things. First thing you just have to remember, the best negotiators, they don't talk, they translate.

54:02I see salespeople all the time, employees trying to ask for more raises. They don't know what to do. They don't understand their value. And so they just talk. They talk without saying a lot. The number one negotiators out there, they translate value. They repeat what you say back to them and they mirror how you feel. You can get whatever you want if it's the other person's idea. And you do that by translating the conversation for somebody. So that's one. The second thing to understand to kind of get control negotiation is you always throw the first punch. A lot of people want to stand back, right?

54:43No, I don't want to push. I don't want to persist. You go into prison, you throw the first punch. So you ask the first question, get them talking. People love hearing themselves talk, especially grown men. They just love the sound of their own voice and they love hearing themselves talk about themselves to talk themselves into decisions. And so you start top of funnel, use the funnel technique. Big picture questions, right? So where are you from? What brings you here today? How can I help you? What does winning look like to you? That's another great way and a great question to reframe a stalled negotiation, right?

55:25As you mirror them, you say, I totally understand why you're frustrated. I totally get it. Let's walk away. You pull and then you say, but if this were to go forward, what does winning look like to you? And then you put them in a position where they get to say either, well, it doesn't look like anything, which is a weird way to answer a question. Or what they usually say is they tell you their number one fear and they give you the in to go and fix the fear. And that's how you do it. That's so good. So new episodes coming out December 5th. Yeah, season two, Owning Manhattan, the greatest TV show in the history of the world.

56:00Honestly, the trailer looks great. I'm not a big reality show, Gurley, which is not good to say to you, I guess. But it looks fascinating. And I'm excited to see you build live. Yeah, no, we shot Netflix shoots in real time. They give us complete creative control. Whoa. And because it's not sold into syndication like cable, like Million Dollar Listing was the law and order of real estate. Because whether it's season three, episode five, or season nine, episode two, right? Cable TV is sold all over the world. Someone's gotta be able to turn on the TV, watch it and understand what's going on. On Netflix, you search.

56:36It's all about search and there's interest graphs and what they call taste circles. So owning Manhattan is an entrepreneurial, aspirational, sexy taste circle. And it's an eight hour movie, right? It's eight episodes. And so what we're able to do is really craft the wildest story without worrying that someone's gonna randomly turn on season two, episode five. You wouldn't, you could do that. I think they did that with like Bandersnatch, but then it's just complicated, right? Watch every episode however you want to, which was an experiment that Netflix did, which basically was like, watch this TV show the way you would watch Law & Order.

57:16There's no narrative thread. It's just what case is this episode gonna be? And Owning Manhattan is unlike any reality TV show I've ever seen. It has narrative thread. it has voiceover. I break the fourth wall, house of cards style. And you get to watch in real time as a company is built, more so in season two. I think I sell an$8 million apartment this season live while getting out of the shower. From the negotiation towards deal done, I am butt naked to putting on my shirt between both parties and the camera barely even cuts. Like I've never seen anything like that before. And I think it's the evolution of the genre.

58:03I think people are sick and tired of knowing what's coming next. And owning Manhattan is the exact opposite of that. That's why we deadlift, even when you don't like it in the morning. That's why you're up at 4.30. Eat the frog. Yeah. Ryan Serhan, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me.

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