How to Build and Leverage Your Personal Brand with Ryan Serhant

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like My First Million. Today, we'll be breaking down how to build and leverage your personal brand. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Ryan Serhant into EO Fire Studios. Ryan is a Bravo TV star,$5 billion in real estate sales, an author, innovator, speaker, and he revolutionizes real estate and inspires others worldwide. He'll give us some of his biggest predictions for the 2024 market. He'll talk about personal brand and how you can build yours.

0:37We'll also talk about the gig economy, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Ryan and our sponsors. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now. A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts.

1:13Ryan, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. So thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I'm excited to be here. I would say I think luck actually does have a lot to do with becoming successful. And I think a lot of people will say, you have to make your own luck. I think a lot of people will say, oh, it's all about hard work and this, that, the other. I think luck does play a good part in it, but I try to control that by working so hard that I make good luck easy to find. I love that phrase. And a quote that I've actually subscribed to for quite some time now is, luck is where effort meets opportunity.

2:06So if you're putting in the effort, opportunities are going to come and you're going to be quote unquote lucky every now and then. And sometimes it only takes once. And Fire Nation, as I mentioned in the intro, we're talking about how to build and leverage your personal brand. And I love Ryan predictions. So what are some of your biggest predictions for the 2024 market? I think there's a lot going on, actually. I'm probably way more optimistic than most other people. I think there's a lot of cash still on the sidelines. I think there's a lot of cash that people have invested. I think unemployment is pretty, pretty low, even though unemployment is ticking up year over year.

2:48I think the Fed is probably going to adjust the benchmark rate earlier than people think. I think people think it'll happen sometime next year, maybe closer to the election. I honestly think it's probably going to happen closer to Q1. It might happen early. And I think that's going to create a significant amount of demand. And I think Biden will run on that. Remember, next year in the United States anyway is a presidential election year. And it's going to be a contentious one. To say the least, I mean, 2024 is going to have some fireworks in more ways than one. I mean, you talked about everything you just shared with the markets.

3:25We've got the Bitcoin halving, we've got the presidential election. We've got a lot of stuff going on in 2024. And you, Ryan, for years now have been building quite the personal brand. So you know a thing or two on how to replicate success. So for our listeners, Fire Nation, what would your advice be when it comes to building a personal brand in 2024 and beyond? I built my entire career off of building a personal brand. I built my entire business off of screaming successes from the mountaintop and finding clear and consistent and memorable brand awareness. And what makes today so much better than like when my dad was trying to build his business, you know, in the 70s, like you used to have to run ads and you would spend all this money and you'd have no idea really who would see them.

4:24Right. How do you track ROI that way today with the power of mobile, with the power of VR, with everything that's coming now through AI? You are your own personal enterprise. You are the business of you. And so I think about personal branding in kind of a three-step process. And before I even get to that, I mean, everyone has a personal brand. You just probably don't even know it, right? You're working around and your reputation is your brand because what is brand? Brand is your core identity, however you present yourself, however you talk, however you look, however you put yourself out there across the internet, in writing, anything you do.

5:07That's how you put yourself out. That's your core identity. That core identity then becomes the perception the world has of you. And that perception turns into reputation the minute you leave the room because now people are talking about you behind your back. And that reputation over time creates your personal brand. right and your brand you might think is oh you're the the guy who's good at math and likes to watch football on sundays but your brand might actually be the super awkward guy who never blinks who has really bad breath oh right that could be your personal brand so before i even get to how to create one and how to build one i'll just say a big piece of advice i give to a lot of people when they're trying to build a company or they're trying to build them up as sales people is to go to someone you trust, but not someone who's going to bully you.

5:56Like don't go to a parent who like doesn't want to hurt your feelings. Go to someone who's willing to hurt your feelings. Okay. And ask them, can you please describe me without using my name and see what they say? That is the perception the world has of you. That's how you come off. You might find out that you're the guy who isn't as funny as he thought he was. you might find out you're the person who's always late. Even though you knew you were late, sometimes you didn't realize that everyone was like, oh yeah, that's Paul. Paul's late. And that's the first thing they say. Okay. Then you want to understand, okay, what did they just tell me that I'm fine with?

6:36Like for me, I started going gray when I was 16 years old and I eventually became okay with it. So yeah, I'm six foot three with gray hair and I should not have gray hair at my age, but you know what? I'm kind of okay with it. And then what do they tell you that you're not okay with? You're like, ah, you know what? I'm going to, I'm going to change that. With me, the guy said, uh, uh, he stares at the ground all the time while he walks. That's weird. No, I don't. And then I realized it. Oh yes, I do. He talks really, really softly. Like he's nervous all the time. No, I don't. I talk. I don't, I do.

7:14God damn. What, what is happening. And I found the reasons why that happened. And then I started to deconstruct who I was as a business. Because the way I put myself out there, what my core identity is, who I believe I am, I am the one who does what. I'm the one who sells what. That is my core identity. Once you develop that core identity and you have a really, really clean and clear understanding of who you are, or if you're listening to this right now and you just want You just have a product, your blog, your product, the t-shirts you sell on Etsy, whatever it is. Then you have to create consistent content.

7:50You can be in front of the camera. You can be behind the camera. You can do video. You can do the written word. But you have to be consistently visible. And then the last step is shouting successes from the mountaintops. It's amplifying each win. And you're not doing it as a brag. You're doing it as a humble brag, as a thanking your clients. So excited for my customers I sold out today. So excited for everyone that got one. I can't wait to restock. So excited for my clients who just recorded a million dollar profit on their home sale after just buying it two days ago, whatever it might be. And that's what I call my Sirhan brand strategy system.

8:33And that's what my newest book, Branded Like Sirhan, is all about. Well, Fire Nation, there's a lot of things you could take away from what Ryan just shared. I want to just focus in on two things. Number one, brand is your core identity. I mean, really understand that, absorb it, live it. And then the last thing that you made as a point, which is shouting success from the mountaintops. This is something that I just see people really struggle with because they think they sound cocky or brash or just overconfident or egotistical. Fire Nation, if you're not shouting your success from the mountaintops, who is?

9:05Because guess what? people have their own lives. They're busy. They're not studying your every move like with lasers and with magnifying glasses. So you being vocal about your success, that's going to help you build this brand that Ryan's talking about here today. And we have a lot to talk about around this topic and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. The new year is upon us and that means new goals, more growth and upgrading your day-to-day workflow. While most sales folk are stuck in the mud of manual scheduling, digging into data, and tracking down leads, let me share with you a better way to win so you can crush your Q1.

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11:23Head over to coda.io slash fire. That's coda.io slash fire to get started for free, coda.io forward slash fire. Ryan, we're back and you believe that the gig economy will be the new working class. So first off, what is your definition of a gig economy and why do you believe it's going to be the new working class? By 2027, 50 % of the workforce in the United States is going to classify at least a portion of their income as 1099 income, which means that they will classify at least a good portion of their income as independent contractor income that they get from selling something, right? Consulting, selling consulting services, selling dentistry equipment, selling insurance, whatever it might be.

12:18So that's massive. Okay. I also look at the student debt bubble. I look at how much credit card debt, auto loan debt, how large the mortgage debt stack is, and you start to really, really see the pieces falling into place for an economy that is run by, quote unquote, freelancers. right that gig economy that really does run the world because those are LLCs S corps those are running small businesses that provide the liquidity to the institutions that we that we that we know and love right that make the world go around to the big banks and the big apparel companies and I believe that all of those people need to learn how to sell they got to learn how to sell something.

13:08And it's been my mission my whole life because when I got into real estate in 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy that day. And I was embarrassed to tell my family. I was embarrassed to tell my friends that I became a real estate salesperson because it felt like a failure. It felt like, ah, if you're going to sales, that's because you weren't smart enough to do a real job, right? And that was the mentality about going into sales for a hundred years, longer. If you're smart enough, you go work at a bank, you're an attorney, you go and do this, you do that. But what people don't realize is everyone is selling something.

13:51Even as an attorney, you're selling your future clients on why they should retain you instead of somebody else. What is your brand as an attorney? You read about OpenAI and Sam Altman. Sam Altman might be one of the greatest salespeople on the planet. There's tons of podcasts out there that talk about is he a technologist? Yes, but he's an amazing salesperson. And I think that's just really, really interesting. Elon Musk. Elon Musk is one of the best salespeople. Is he smart? Absolutely. Wouldn't be where he is, though, if he wasn't a great salesperson. I know amazing software developers, right?

14:29CEOs of billion dollar companies. I'm like, so you run a tech company? And they say, no, no, no. I run a tech sales company. There would be no tech if it didn't actually sell. So I strip all that back and I wanted to create something that would enable everyone growing up, everyone switching careers, everyone saying, you know what, I don't need to spend$100 ,000 and go into debt and go to college. To do what? To go out and be a freelancer anyway? What am I doing? And sell more. Earn more. Live a better livelihood. Take control of your life. Live and work wherever you want to work. And it's exciting.

15:08I think there's a complete wealth transfer, but there's also a work transfer that's happening right now. That is one thing that's interesting. Everybody is talking about the wealth transfer, but nobody's talking about that work transfer. So it's something to be thinking about, Fire Nation, as we're moving forward here in 2024, 25, 26, and beyond. I mean, you heard those stats that Ryan was sharing, and you did mention the word AI, which is all around us. is definitely the buzzword of the moment of the year, probably of the decade. So how do you see AI specifically changing the way we work? There's a book called Zero to One by Peter Thiel, right?

15:48And in there, he says that the greatest businesses of the next generation are those that are going to use technology to empower people, not replace them. And I think there's a lot of businesses out there that are looking at AI and they're saying, oh, my goodness, this is going to replace workforces. Now, is it going to replace some administrative tasks? Absolutely. Does it mean that that person no longer has a job? No. I think that AI is the next evolution of learning. I mean, that's exactly what it is. I think you used to have to ride a horse to get across the country. Now you don't have to. You used to have to go to the library and go to the bibliography and pull out the micro fish to find anything that was written over five years ago.

16:48Now you don't have to. So what do we today and our kids into the future, what do we currently do that in a couple years we're going to say, man, good thing I don't have to do that anymore? So now we can spend more of our time doing what we do best because think about any subject you want to learn about. You used to have to read 100 books, put in those 10 ,000 hours, and then start thinking for yourself. but what if I don't have to spend those 10 ,000 hours anymore? What if I can have the information in front of me immediately? And now I can just start thinking for myself now, imagine what more I can build.

17:29Imagine what more I can do. Um, and I think in my business anyway, in real estate, I think AI, uh, is there to empower salespeople to be even better representatives of their clients. I think there is agent intelligence, right, is the way I'm thinking about it. And it's exciting, man. I think it's, I don't know, I remember when I got on the internet the first time and sat there waiting for AOL.com to dial up so I could get on instant messenger and tell my friend he was a doofus, you know, in 1994. You're a doofus. You know, it's a unique time. And this will be the dawn of that. I mean, it's wild, man.

18:09It's crazy. It is wild. It is totally wild in Fire Nation. You are here at the forefront right now. How are you going to look back in 10, 20, 30 years on how you acted right now? And I want to end with a bang. Your third book, break it down for us, Ryan. I wrote a trilogy. In 2018, I put out my first book called Sell It Like Serhant. It became a Bravo TV show. It then became an online education platform, which is bigger now than ever before. and it did a lot for my career and for our ability to help train sales people around the globe. And what Serhant was, was the toolkit for the gig worker, the toolkit for the salesperson.

18:53Learn how to sell anything to anybody, right? All the tactics. But then what I realized was, okay, so I gave everyone the toolkit, but now if you don't have the confidence to use it, then you can give anybody a toolbox, but then, all right, go build a house. They don't know how to do that, right? They had that hammer and they don't know how to swing it. You know, you have the toolkit to be able to walk into a room and sell anything to anyone, but now you got that pit in your stomach, your hands are sweaty. You're like, I wasn't cut out for this. Just put me back at my desk. So my second book was big money energy, which is what I used to call successful people that I would see that walked around with the confidence of somebody who knew what they were doing and were not afraid of money the way I was for so long.

19:37I didn't have any. So I was actually afraid of it. I wanted it. And that's what I thought I wanted was money, but I was actually afraid of it. You talk to a lot of people who are overweight and you find out that they're actually afraid of food. As much as they would binge eat, they were so afraid of it. And one of the ways that you get around binge eating is you learn to love food, right? And by loving it, you have less of it. And so Big Money Energy was really put out there to help people create the mindset of future you so that you can start acting like the person you know you're going to become right now without having to wait.

20:13And then brand it like Sirhan, which is my third book and most likely my absolute final book because man, oh man, the process of writing a book is like, is a lot. It's a lot. It takes a lot, a lot, a lot of time. It's the third piece to the trilogy, to that puzzle that says, okay, so you know how to sell. You have the confidence to sell whatever it is you want. But if no one knows what you're selling, it's all a mood point. So my third book teaches you how to take those skills and put them to work by either building a personal brand or the brand of a product. And I wrote it because I couldn't find anything else out there that would actually teach me how to do this.

20:59It's like, so how do I build a brand on social media? Like there's, there's courses and things, but nothing was consistent. How do I build a brand using the power of PR? How do I, how do I use a system so that I can conceptually build a brand? Um, and I, and so I wrote about it and I, and I interviewed, I don't know, 20 different people like across the board everyone from like kenneth cole like who has built an amazing apparel brand to gary v to nick sharma sharma brands who is like the the secret guy behind some of the biggest brands ever and and rebecca minkler and the list goes on and on and on just really digging into how they think about brand and how they've taken control of their own brands or their products brands um and really built massive businesses to get all their secrets and just give it out to everybody in a concise way.

21:51And that's it. I think it's incredibly tactical. It's very useful. There's no fluff. There's no bullshit. And I'll never write another book for the rest of my life. Wow. Mic drop and where does Fire Nation go to get their hands on a copy? Brand it like SirHant.com. Amazon, anywhere books are sold. Fire Nation, do the average of the five people you spend the most time with, You've been hanging out with RS and JLD today, so keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Ryan in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up. Links everywhere. And Ryan, thank you for sharing your truth, knowledge, your value with Fire Nation.

22:32For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Ryan for sponsoring today's episode. And what can 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you? How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment? My first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, is a revolutionary 17-step roadmap that will lead you to the lifestyle you've been dreaming about. This book took me 10 years of accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs, and you can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com.

23:12I'll catch you there or on the flip side.