Bankrupt and Fired Before 30 | #BILFPOD with Mauricio Umansky

0:00Remember when I sold the Playboy Mansion, first$100 million sale in Los Angeles, and I made a ton of money on that one. And I came into the office the next day and everybody was like, hey, Mauricio, why aren't you on holiday? Why aren't you on vacation? I'm like, well, that sale passed.

0:13Mauricio Umansky:What would you say to people that say that you're so lucky, Mauricio, you had everything handed to you? Well, it's just wrong. Um, it's not true. They fired me right before Christmas. I was around 26 years old when I got fired. I already had two daughters, had experienced already a bankruptcy in a chapter 11 at a very young age. My God, if you don't fail at least once a day, then you're not doing enough things on a daily basis. Welcome back to the BILF pod, where authenticity trumps authority. Here on the BILF pod, boss I'd like to follow. I am your host, Mara Dorn. We love to highlight women in the boardroom to CEOs, founders, reality stars, to real estate moguls.

0:53Mauricio Umansky:Today's guest needs no introduction for he is a force to be reckoned to founder and CEO of the agency. His agency has closed over a hundred billion in real estate. But the funny thing is he didn't start out in real estate, really started out in fashion. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Mr. Mauricio Yamansky. Welcome to the BelfPod. Oh, thank you so much. It's so good to be on here with you. And I can't wait to explore and figure out some of those authentic things that you're talking about. Well, first, talk about authentic. Do you recognize this?

1:35Oh, my God. It's so tiny on my screen.

1:37Mauricio Umansky:How about this? 90265. I recognize it. No phone do see sec. So I found this. I found this. Does this ring? Does this take you back? Is this nostalgia or what? Oh my God, I love it. Let me see that other one. That was a sweatshirt. Now that I know you're looking at my sweatshirts and everything. Yeah, that was a great, that was a t-shirt, right? Yeah, this is a t-shirt. I'm not a, wait, I just want to preface. I'm not a stalker. I was just doing my due diligence over here. So I found this on Posh Mart. I found, this is where, does this ring a bell? Does this take you back? Oh my God, that was a fun time in my life.

2:10It was a really, really interesting time. I just, you know, had a ton of fun growing that company. That was a lot of fun. We took that company over with$3 million of sales and turned it into a$30 million company in two years. It was a ton of fun.

2:26Mauricio Umansky:You started in fashion and then eventually moved over, sold your company, moved over to real estate. I read an article that your daughter wrote, which I thought was incredible. She wrote a whole article about you and where you started and why you got into real estate. So take me back there. You go into fashion and then you switch over. That's a pretty big switch. What made you go from fashion to real estate? Well, failure in fashion at the end of the day. I mean, you know, in 90265, I had to, even though we grew the company tremendously, I was shipping goods. We were the first ones to do garment dye.

3:05And the goods were shrinking in different ways and they were being returned. And so even though I grew it tremendously from a sales perspective, production was a mess. and ultimately we had to sell the company, close it down and sell it. The brand was good. The label was good. So people wanted the brand and the label. Then I went to go work for a huge company, a corporate company that hired me. And man, I was not built for corporate world. I can resonate. I went to go work for them. I did that for about a year, eight months. And then they let me go. they fired me right before Christmas and you know I was young still I mean I got I started that company in 90265 when I was I don't know I got into it I we actually purchased that company I don't know I was probably 22 years old when I did that yeah you know so I think that I was around 26 years old when I got fired and I already had two daughters and you know had had experienced already a bankruptcy in a chapter 11 at a very young age.

4:11And yeah, so, you know, it was time to make a change. And my brother-in-law owns Hilton and Highland, which was a great real estate brokerage firm. And I decided, you know, I knew I was good at sales and I decided to get into sales and start selling some bigger ticket items, started selling some big homes.

4:29Mauricio Umansky:Yeah. I mean, I can totally resonate. That's pretty much what happened in my story for myself is that I went from corporate America, well, I was supposed to go to corporate America, ended up in sales, which is really what I call the school of hard knocks, because if you haven't experienced sales, then you really haven't experienced life. But, you know, I know you went into business with your family and then ended up leaving. Now, when it comes to family and business, people say, do not mix it. What would you say about mixing family and business? Well, I disagree with that. You know, it was great for us.

5:02I mean, We had a great run. We had a great, my God, 15 years together. We made a ton of money together. Yeah. So, you know, whether it ended up failing in the end and, you know, it got a little hairy and, you know, that's just part of life. But, you know, at the end of the day, we had 15 great years together. For sure. And we made a ton of money together. And so, you know, things can work. I think egos sometimes get in the way. Yeah. Greets sometimes get in the way. But if you can keep all of those things apart, you can actually, you know, do business. But, you know, you're going to get into fights in business no matter what with somebody.

5:39Mauricio Umansky:Absolutely. Right? Whether it's your family, your friend, your partner. And, man, you better trust who you're getting in business with. That's the bottom line. Yeah, I would definitely say I agree with you. My business was built around family and friends. So I can tell you from my own experience that you're right. You know, it's about the lessons that you learn. Sometimes it gets a little, you know, it gets a little precocious. and there's definitely some trials and tribulations along the way, but you do learn a lot. You take a lot from it. And I know one big thing for yourself was when you left.

6:08Mauricio Umansky:I was reading that when you left, you know, that's a big leap of faith. That's a hard leap of faith for people that are, you know, you're in a comfortable situation, you're making a lot of money. So what was the turning point that you were like, you know what, I'm going to go full belief in myself and I'm going to start my own thing? well you know i became the number three agent in the country yeah number one in california and there was really only two more spots to go i love that um it's not like so uh you know the goal for me at that point was to become number one right but you know it was as much as i wanted to do that there was a bigger goal and there was something you know a lot of the systems and strategies that i used to become you know number three um were teachable they were repeatable There were systems that I could work with people.

6:56And I thought that there was a void in the real estate business at that time. I met a great friend of mine and colleague, Billy Rose, who I ultimately ended up founding the agency with. And I remember he used to run a meeting where we all shared private listings and we all shared all kinds of different knowledge. And I called him up and I said, dude, I've got this idea. and he said yes before we I even pitched it that's crazy you know and we launched the agency and here we are you know 15 years later just so happens that we're pretty much 50 50 on those two worlds and here we are 15 years later with 170 offices globally in 17 countries so still growing still pushing hard and the end does not hear yet.

7:46Mauricio Umansky:You sound like me, like it's never enough. That's like me, it's never enough. You know, again, like my story resonates so much. It wasn't enough to do a billion dollars in sales and I wanted to build from there and continue. But one thing I do want to talk about, especially for the audience, is the importance of building an agency that has a strong culture and why culture is a big part of business in building a thriving company. Well, culture is everything. You know, culture I define as the personality of the business. And that's basically everybody that works at the business, at the company, should share in that culture, should share in that personality.

8:26That doesn't mean we have different personalities. We all have our own personalities. We all do our own thing. But there are certain personality traits that we all share in common.

8:36Mauricio Umansky:Yeah. And if you don't share that, then go work at another company. For sure. You know, it's that simple. But that's what kind of keeps you together, right? It's, you know, for us at the agency, it's ethics. It's integrity. It's no assholes. It's collaboration. You know, it's these type of things that, you know, keep us all together. You know, we all, you know, we're only as good as our weakest link. For sure. You know, it's these little things that we just, you know, throw out there and we talk about. You know, we stay hungry. You know, we dare to innovate. Like, these are the things that we talk about that, you know, that keep us all together and keep us all rowing the same boat.

9:15Mauricio Umansky:Yeah, I agree 100%. I think culture defines people, it defines family. But when an organization has a strong culture, it speaks leaps and bounds about the company itself. Look, real estate is like insurance. That's what I do. You base it on commission. So people have to want to come to work. You can't force them to come. But what do you do, and this happens a lot too, when you bring somebody in and they can't or won't conform to the culture, what do you do? well at the end of the day sometimes you just have to let them go yeah um you know i mean you you have to make some hard decisions at a certain point in your life you've got to make a decision as to whether what's more important to your culture you know the the law the big picture the long picture or you know one person that's making a few you know quid um and uh and you've got to make a decision on what's more important to you you know and and at the end of the day i I think, you know, you're going to make, there's no right or right answer to that decision.

10:11You have to analyze everything individually. But at the end of the day, you know, culture should win. If that is what your North Star is, or if that's what your business is built on. Not every business is built on culture, by the way. That's not, you know, you don't have to have culture to have a business. But there are certain businesses that are built, you know, around culture. and ours is one of them.

10:38Mauricio Umansky:Yeah. No, I mean, I think a business without culture is not a thriving business. I've been in business for 20 years and I can tell you that when your culture's not strong and your agents aren't running through walls for you, your business won't work. They have to want to come to work. You can't make them come. And if your culture, I mean, what else could you build your business around if it's not culture? Yeah. I mean, I happen to agree with you and that's a big thing for us and for me. So I'm 100 % in agreement with you on this one. What would you say would separate an agent that's making$200 ,000 a year versus an agent that's making$2 million?

11:15I think a lot of things. But, you know, one of them is the fight and the grind and the grip, you know, that somebody actually has. Obviously, you know, there are other aspects that sometimes are uncontrollable or some people have more of an advantage of, right? Like when you're in sales and real estate, in particularly, if you happen to have, you know, a high, you know, you went to school in the city that you're selling at. You have a lot of friends and you're very popular and you've got a lot of people to talk to and call. It's going to be a lot easier than if you, you know, you come to Los Angeles from South Africa.

11:53Mauricio Umansky:For sure. You're starting from scratch and you don't know anybody. You can still make it, by the way. I know tons of those people that did that and made a ton of money. but but you know at the end of the day there's a little bit of luck a little bit of you know your background but it's grit it's perseverance it's people that you know a sale is only as good as your last sale yeah you know I mean I remember when I sold the Playboy Mansion first 100 million dollar sale in Los Angeles and I made a ton of money on that one and I came into the office the next day and everybody was like hey Mauricio why aren't you on holiday why marriage on vacation, I'm like, well, that sale passed.

12:32Like it doesn't matter. The next one. Right. So it's the mindset that it just keeps you going. You're not doing it for the money. You're doing it for the competition, for the need, for it's that, you know, for the grit, for the resilience. Like that's what that is.

12:47Mauricio Umansky:Yeah. No, I know. I call it chutzpah. I don't, I think you have to have chutzpah. If you don't have chutzpah, if you don't have chutzpah, you're not making it in like, you're just not there's, and I, you know, like, but yes, I think grit and grind, but what it comes down to is the chutzpah. And that's what you can be a hard work. You can have talent, but hard work's going to beat out talent every single time of the day. And that just kind of goes back to what you were saying. You know, you can spend time in your trophy room, but all of a minute, and then it's time to move on in sales because the sales, the sales game is fast.

13:17Mauricio Umansky:It's fast paced. And the one thing that I think happens for people, maybe you can touch on this a little bit, however you want to do this is, you know when we come into the office i always tell the agents it doesn't matter what's going on out here what matters is what's going on in here so how do you because this happens so much especially with the younger agents or the women or whatever when you have stuff going on your personal life right which everybody has stuff going on how do you separate that when it's public versus i mean not even public just when you're going on in your personal life how are you able to separate that and continue to perform at a high caliber?

13:53As you said, it's all in these eight inches between your head, right? It's all up there. And controlling that mind and controlling that mindset at the end of the day is critical. And everybody does it differently. For me, it's a lot of affirmations. It's a lot of meditation. It's focusing on the task. you know I can focus on a lot of different things at once I can't multitask but I can focus on a lot of different things at once and the I think controlling your brain and controlling your mindset is at the end of the day is everything right because you're gonna have noise you're gonna have distractions you're gonna have you know just yet noise there's no better way of putting it right where every distraction every noise is out there it's part of life um but you know during the time that you're trying to be focused and you're trying to sell which is you know our game right um you know a football player gets on the football field they put on their cleats they put on their pads they put on their helmet and for three hours they're on right um or for one you know three 15 minute quarters right uh they're on they got to be focused there's nothing else out there.

15:07Right. And so what I say about sales is like, I wake up in the morning, I get myself ready, I get dressed and I'm on.

15:13Mauricio Umansky:Yeah. And so, you know, once you're on, you're on like, that's your, that is your job. That's your, that's your game. Yeah. How many hours you could keep that focused. You know, I say that if you could do, you know, three hours of tremendous focus and not get distracted and not do anything else, that's like working eight hours. Um, if you can do eight hours, then you're, you know, you're going to kill everybody. Nobody's got, nobody's got a chance on you. Yeah. I mean, I think some might say that in, again, I'm not saying this, but I, you know, people look, I've heard this many times, like you're so lucky, you know, you had a big platform to get started on, you know, you're part of the Hiltons.

15:50Mauricio Umansky:You also had a wife that was on the housewives, but what would you say to people that say that you're so lucky, Mauricio, you had everything handed to you. How would you, how would you negate that? Well, it's just wrong. It's not true. I mean, first of all, you know, we never got onto the housewives until after I was already the number three agent in the country. We didn't start television until I was the number three agent in the country. I did that all on my own as far as having you know the Hilton connection and what have you yeah Rick Hilton was my brother-in-law and I worked for Hilton and Highland but there was zero nepotism there was zero anything I got I got nothing out of that I got you know other than being put on a couple of open houses you know which was I was grateful for and by the way I want to be clear I didn't expect anything yeah this is not me complaining whether I got anything or didn't yeah I think I wasn't expecting to get anything.

16:55I needed to prove myself. And so everything I did in sales at the agency and all of that stuff, I did that without a platform. I always say I was one of the first people to get on, one of the only salespeople that I know of on television that had a thriving career before they got on television and real estate, I should say, not salespeople, but one of the only real estate agents that had a thriving career prior to getting on television. Everybody else that I know of, whether it be million dollar listing or selling whatever Ryan's show is, Manhattan or whatever, you know, all of those shows, they all made their careers on television.

17:34Mauricio Umansky:Yeah. Now, I won't tell you I didn't use television. I used the housewives to help launch the agency. Why not? I used the, you know, at that point we had the platform, but that platform was created without any help whatsoever and then I used the platforms that we were on to do that and then obviously we ended up then we ended up with buying Beverly Hills on Netflix which was a great series and I loved that a ton of fun people still want me to bring that back maybe one of these days we'll bring it back but yeah I mean we definitely use television and all the platforms and and and like I said at the beginning as a salesperson if you're not using your connections and you're not using your your network like that you're not using your tools like that is part of your toolbox so you know now whether you make a good call whether people trust you whether you can earn their trust whether you can that's on you yeah right but the opportunities are there you got to know when to open the door and go and walk in the room and take advantage of it yeah no i i mean i agree wholeheartedly i've heard it my whole career you're so lucky You know, you had big boobs.

18:43Mauricio Umansky:You did this. How about this? I was just smart, and I was able to exercise the assets that I had in addition to, you know, being able to sell. And that's an art in itself. So that's why I was asking because I hear it all the time. Oh, you're so lucky. But it's not luck. It has nothing to do with luck. It's hard work. And then realizing what you have. That's what salespeople do. That's what we do. We sell ourselves every single day and everything that comes in our toolbox with us. So I totally I agree with what you're saying. So as so I do have another question for you. So what do you think is harder, building a billion dollar real estate agent or rebranding yourself?

19:23I think they're both could be difficult. Yeah. I think both could be very difficult. Rebranding is is difficult because it comes with luggage. It comes with legacy. It comes with a bunch of different things that you need to change and recreate and innovate and then change the perception. Perception is one of the hardest things to change. You know, like reputation. Reputation is your perception, right? I mean, so, and that's one of those things that you always constantly hear, right? You can destroy your reputation in a nanosecond by doing something wrong. For sure. And then good luck repairing it, right?

19:56So rebranding's hard. It can be done, but it's very difficult. um you know when you're talking about building a billion dollar uh brokerage um you know real estate sales are kind of strange you know billion dollars is thrown out there so easily yeah um and i i have a big problem with that but it's so easy to say you know mike you know i remember there was an article that said you know i grew the company to 57 billion dollars or something like that and i'm like that's just so stupid uh my wish i know they don't understand that then that's not the

20:28Mauricio Umansky:revenue you're taking home. I get, yeah, I know. It sounds good though. It's good. Use what you have. It's sales. It's good. It's a great platform. A hundred percent. Yeah. But building a, you know, building a global platform, which we've done, um, again, 170 offices to date, I'm opening up 30 offices a year. So, you know, by, by 12 months from now, we'll have 20 offices, uh, 200 offices. it's hard it takes a tremendous amount of work you know you have to rely on everybody under you know that works for you and to have them do you know be experts and and believe in them and make them believe in themselves yeah um yet you know what keeps us all together and rowing goes back to what you just said earlier which was culture right if you've got that culture then everybody can work over here and ultimately get to the same you know spot was there they're both hard that what what do you say they are both doing both of those things is not you know by the way selling a house is not easy selling an insurance policy is not easy nothing let's just be real like these are not easy in life okay like but by the same token you know if you look at real estate agents um i think seven percent of real estate agents do 93 percent of the transactions okay um so you know we always talk about the 80 20 rule real estate in terms of agents i think it's even you know i think it's a 93 7 rule yeah it's i mean it's not easy right now i mean with everything the economy it there's a lot there's a lot more to it than people think when it comes down to building anything and now you're you're international right you have agencies all over not just in the u.s but throughout the entire country 17 countries I was just in Sardinia visiting our latest office.

22:19It's so beautiful there in Sardinia. I love it. And, you know, I was in London, visiting London to open up in London next. I think that's coming soon. We just opened up the Middle East and Saudi Arabia. We're all over the Caribbean, all over Canada, all over Mexico and Central America, and obviously all over the U.S.

22:39Mauricio Umansky:Wow. That's amazing that you have all of these. I mean, you're not stopping anytime soon, right? This is just you're just scratching the surface over here. It's like never enough getting started. Well, it's not even about it being enough, right? It's like, what are you building? What are you doing? It's not about enough. It's not about, you know, that I think that if I think if you're looking at things as to what's enough, it's just a different way of it's a different mindset. It's a different way of looking at things. Yeah, I'm not looking at what's enough. I'm looking at how do I build a business?

23:10Mauricio Umansky:What are you trying? Like, what's your end goal? What is your end goal? Is it legacy? Is it, you know, leaving something behind? To build a global business. Yeah, you know, I don't know if I have an end goal in terms of legacy or leaving something behind. I mean, I think that if you do a great job, whatever that job is, there's always an exit, right? Whether it stays in the family and there's legacy and it gets left behind and it continues and it delivers great cash flow or whether you sell it or whether you go public or, you know, there's lots of outcomes if you deliver a great business. Yeah.

23:42Right? the world's at your fingertips if you do that. But first we got to go build the business.

23:49Mauricio Umansky:Yeah. So I do have one question for you. So I know you, you know, you started at 41. That's when you took the leap of faith. Now for people, for people that want, because this is always like a, this is always like a question that people have. Is there ever a time or an age where you can be, where you should just be like, all right, I'm just going to kind of go with the flow. or can you be successful at any age? Oh, my God. I think you could be successful at any age. And I think it's a mindset. Absolutely. I mean, you know, you can build things, create things. It just depends on what kind of energy you have.