Optimizing Brand Growth and Sales Strategies | Ryan Serhant

0:00I think YouTube Shorts is very big for this audience. I'm obsessed with it because it's search. The amount of people that search YouTube when they're considering to move to a town is staggering. It's second behind Google. I know that I'm moving in a year to Newton, Massachusetts, and literally the second place people will type in Newton, Mass. Schools, Newton, Mass. Parks, country clubs. YouTube is number two. You started VaynerMedia, right? Now housed under VaynerX, right? In the middle of 2008, 2009 recession. That's right. Similarly, we started SirHand. I was a real estate agent, built a big team, left in 2020.

0:35People started getting sick. We moved forward anyway. We launched in September 2020 at a tough time, right? And in both cases, I think there's this underlying belief that times of crisis can breed innovation and success. And so - There's never a bad time to launch a good business. Correct. Right? Like if you're capable, like we are, in a weird way, to your point, there's a lot of opportunities that happen during times of trouble that wouldn't be there during times of prosperity. Both prosperity and ease like we had prior to this last couple of years, or what we're going through right now, genuinely requires operational capability and talent and execution and grit and patience and all the things that matter, but it makes sense.

1:19Yeah. So now where we are in our world, most people who are here are in the real estate family and mortgage rates are on the rise. the real estate market is now facing new challenges. You got low inventory and slow sales in one market. You've got some inventory and fast sales and others. You put yourself in our shoes. What practical strategies are you thinking about? What shifts would you recommend for sales people today? Yeah. So here's my biggest thought, right? And team, and thank you for everybody in the chat. I love the context because it allows me to use things like in Ohio or Las Vegas or London, oh, London, Canada, excuse me.

1:59There are things you can control and there's things that you can't control. Nobody on this call controls interest rates. Nobody in this call controls some of the variables that we saw with like Florida and California have these dynamics. Texas and New York have these dynamics. Ontario has this dynamics. So everyone here I'm looking at, Boise and Boca Raton are gonna act differently. Sweden definitely is going to act differently than Bell Harbor, Florida. So there's a lot of things that are macro. What I do during times like this is focus on micro. What can I do? So if I'm a real estate agent in any market, whether it's easier or the hardest in today's exact second, what I focus on, and you know I'm very consistent about this and you've benefited from this greatly, I think the one thing you can control is creating demand.

2:48Right? You can control creating demand. And I think demand creation in real estate properly has talked about a lot of blocking and tackling for newbies, cold calling and networking, we know all that stuff. I will continue to yell from the top of the mountains that making content on an individual basis from Sean Walsh on here to Emil Gorgeous to Toby Swank that, you know, Walla Walla, by the way, a place that makes great wine. You know, for Toby, his ability to make content literally actually ironically, even a video on a Facebook reel of him tasting a Walla Walla cab from Leonetti and talking about the market.

3:29That's it. Just literally six minutes, glass of Leonetti Cabernet, talking about the market. He may get a client, Ryan, because he's drinking Leonetti Cabernet. For example, for me, I know that 99 % of the people right now, when I say Leonetti Cabernet, it doesn't even register. Half the audience right now doesn't even know what I'm saying. And even people that know what Cabernet is in wine, they don't know exactly what I'm actually referencing. And so you have the ability to control demand creation. And I believe demand creation happens in networking. I think it happens in cold emailing. I think it's cold calling.

4:06I think it's direct mail. But by a country mile, the best way to create demand in today's world is to create as much social media content as you humanly can around what you know. Don't fake the funk. If you're in year three as an agent, that's going to have a different knowledge base than year 17. Talk about what you know. Don't fake it till you make it. Talk about what you know, how you know it, what you're seeing. And then like the example I used with the gentleman with the Leonetti cab, bring your personal life into it, whether that's golf. Immediately, Rai, four people in the chat talked about my Aaron Rodgers t-shirt and my Jets fandom.

4:42I'm going to say this very clear. VaynerMedia, which is now probably like a$350 million a year revenue business, VaynerX's. Right? I believe that a million dollars of our revenue is because I personally am a New York Jets fan. That there is a CMO marketer out there that feels a closeness to me because in both of our sadness of our Jets fans, random and subconsciously she or he has given us business without even realizing it. And that's how the world actually works. You know, I feel a connection towards you when you talk about your story of your come up, because even though it's not exactly the same as mine, it has enough of it in there that just makes me feel a different way towards you in the beginning of when I first became aware of you that matters.

5:28And I think that people need to focus on demand creation, no matter how little sales are happening right now, if you're creating 37 potential clients in 18 months because of your dinner parties, your barbecues in your backyard, you're knocking on doors or you're making six pieces of social media content a day talking about the market and yourself and your family and whatever you're comfortable with. And you're doing the work. You're doing the fucking work. Yeah, you're doing the something I say. Versus what you know, people are like, oh, I'm looking again, Kelly B saying Tampa's cold. Like, what can I do about it?

6:01And I'm sure Kelly's not that person. She's all the other way. But I know that 90 % of people are playing that game. Well, I got so unlucky. Interest rates went up just as I got going. Like they just start to complain about things that they can't control. They blame everybody but themselves. You can wake up this morning. Think about what's happening right now. You and I and all these wonderful people decided to allocate the time to do what we're doing now. All from different angles. All for different reasons. but let's call a spade a spade. All of that is in the interest of us all putting in the work.

6:36100%. Something that I say all the time is take care of the work, the work takes care of you. When it's busy, grab buckets, right? When you're closing, grab buckets, catch all the rain, and then make sure you hold on to those buckets. And other times, and then go out and go build more buckets, right? Build those buckets and build those buckets. Now you talk about content, we have, there's lots of agents at Sirhant and all the markets that we're in now, who are completely comfortable getting in front of a camera, getting in front of their phone. You get this question a lot, but I just want to hit on it.

7:06What do you tell the person who's completely uncomfortable? That's just not them. They don't want to fake it till they make it. They're not dancing on TikTok. They're not even good writers, right? They don't want to go and blog on LinkedIn. I tell them two things. One - How you build brand. Yeah, I tell them two things. One, you don't have to. I'm not sitting here trying to convince anyone that they have to. Sure. On the flip side, on the second piece, it's more important. I believe most people don't create content because they're scared of judgment. And I tell them that high school is over. And even if your first video is a little clunky and you don't like the way you look or this, that, the other thing, anybody who leaves a snarky or nasty comment is hurting themselves, has nothing to do with your life.

7:48And the silent majority that are consuming it, that are considering to do business with you is far more interesting than the three people that are so hurt that they want to leave a nasty comment that your dress isn't pretty, or you don't know what you're talking about. And so, other people's opinions is devastating, like Kat said in the comments. It's my number one, it's insane to me how that ultimately is my mission in life, which is, oh, this is a very simple game of confidence versus insecurity. That's all it is. I'm empathetic to it. We all have confidence in certain areas than others, but I couldn't recommend people more to make themselves uncomfortable.

8:25And, and I would tell the other group, a lot of people say, Gary, I don't need it. I'm the dominant real estate agent in my area. Like I'm good. I just, I always think that's scary. Like the greatest champions in every sport eventually hit a day. Like Kobe Bryant was great, but even in his last season, there was a lot of off nights and, you know, and in the Muhammad Ali got knocked out by Trevor Burbick and nobody even knows who Trevor Burbick is. And so, you know, I think, you know, father time in sports happens and father time in business happens. I think that the audacity that you don't need it is exactly what a young lion like me will take advantage of.

9:02There is a 24 year old you and me, Ryan, right now in the market where somebody is overly confident and they will TikTok and Facebook and Instagram their way into a problem to that 30 year vet. Oh, for sure. For sure. When I find those agents, I usually reach out to them and ask them why they work where they work and they should come here. It's one of the reasons we have Sergan Studios, which is our in-house production company, and we have ID Lab, which is our in-house creative agency, helping agents in a way that I never had at the firm I was at before and in a way that I could never find any other brokerage to really help create personal brands to generate leads in their sleep and do business in organic ways that you ordinarily wouldn't be able to do.

9:45Where do you find today underpriced attention? LinkedIn is obsessed. I'm obsessed with LinkedIn for everyone here because people's mind, I'll tell a couple of things. One, you and I and everybody in here, when we go to TikTok versus when we go to Instagram versus when we go to LinkedIn, we are in three totally different psychological mindsets. Right? I don't think you are going to LinkedIn. Well, actually you might, because I do. This actually, because we're degenerates. We may go into LinkedIn at 11, 15 p.m. and go through the feed. But most people go to TikTok there because that's mindless entertainment.

10:27Sure. Versus 11, 12 a.m. like right now when they're going into LinkedIn because they might be doing business development when our content may then show up. So LinkedIn is acting like Facebook several years ago. It has crazy ad targeting. Everyone here can literally target employees of the biggest employer in their town. And especially think about how smart what I'm about to say. You know, there's a fast growing company in your area and people are moving into the area because of this fast growing company. You can literally run ads about you being a real estate agent or what you know about the town to employees of that company and start becoming the refer, people will see it and refer people or the person that you want to get to will see it because you actually targeted the employees of Snapchat in Venice when Snapchat was exploding in Venice.

11:18LinkedIn's a monster, the ad targeting, not only that, the organic reach. You could have, everybody here could have zero followers on, I'm putting my LinkedIn in here. Everyone literally feel free to follow me for the purpose of research. Here's my LinkedIn. Click it. You will start to see my content in feed. You will be blown away by how well and how many people that reaches. And don't forget, this is a referral industry. So you could say, hey, I'm selling in Tampa. But again, somebody may like you because of what you said when you're making your content on LinkedIn and may refer you. And so I just think LinkedIn's a monster.

11:53I think YouTube Shorts is very big for this audience. Quick HIP videos. I'm obsessed with it because it's search. The amount of people that search YouTube when they're considering to move to a town is staggering. It's second behind Google. I know that I'm moving because my husband or my wife is being relocated in a year to Newton, Massachusetts. And literally the second place people will type in Newton, Mass schools, Newton, Mass parks, country clubs. YouTube is number two. And if you're making YouTube short content, you're showing up in that, especially if you're smart in how you title. If you make a video and it's titled, the school systems in Newton, Mass, and you're a real estate agent talking about the schools in detail, that becomes the reason you get the lead.

12:38Yeah, something we do within fair housing. Yeah, something that we do in the Hamptons that we started doing with studios is started doing neighborhood guides, neighborhood tours, and teaming up with other publications. So it's not specifically tied to us. And we're doing this in Miami. And we use LinkedIn a lot as well in, you know, in South Carolina, we just opened in South Carolina, Chris Bowes is leading that charge. And, you know, you drive around, you see every major company like Gulfstream. And so running ads directly against Gulfstream. And then you see the at Gulfstream.com emails from potential sellers and purchasers just start coming through because they feel spoken to, right?

13:15They feel heard. You know, there's something happening in comments, and you just did something, I don't know the full details on fair housing requirements and complying. That's another thing that drives me crazy, Ry, is how many people use law as a reason not to do something. It's very easy to comply. Yes, you might not be able to do something the same way a diet soda can or a sneaker can, right? But you can absolutely, absolutely always comply. Back to Megan, who asked in the comments, how do I get more engagement out of YouTube? I go, you know, post more. She says, I am, but not gaining followers.

13:51Megan, the next thing you need to do is post different things, right? One of the things that, you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and thinking you're going to get a different outcome. A lot of people, you know, will make a video of themselves, especially in this industry, and they make 30 of them and it doesn't click. That's okay. Not everybody crushes on video. What you may want to do is flip the camera over, walk the house and talk. maybe the visual of the house and your voice is the right concept for, you know, for the content. So try different formats, try different formats.

14:24Maybe you just do audio, no video at all. And then just have an image. Like there's a lot of different ways to make content. Haley post as many times as you can a day. I'm being dead serious. Now posting 15 times on TikTok is crazy, but posting three times on TikTok and three times on LinkedIn and two times on Twitter or X and three times on threads and two times on Facebook and one time on YouTube. You can get your 15 from more distribution. On a single platform, four is where you probably want to max out on. Good advice. All anyone's talking about right now is, I just want to shift topics for a second, is AI.

14:59You've talked about it a lot, a lot of interviews, a lot of videos. There's no doubt that it's reshaping industries, right? It's including the market agency space, right? It's including what you're doing. and in our case, real estate, how do you see AI impacting the world of salespeople in the service sector? And then more practically, what tips and strategies are you thinking about now to suggest for the agents who are here? Can you use that to their advantage? There's a wave coming. It's called AI. And everyone here is on the beachfront, right at the front. And we have two choices. Most people are putting their head in the sand, and this is their strategy.

15:40A couple of people are buying or building a surfboard, grabbing it, watching videos on how to surf and are prepared to catch that wave. So first of all, my first practical piece of advice is every single person here who's like, fuck AI, hate AI, it's ruining the world, it's bad, I'm scared of it. I've got good news for you. just like your parents hated the internet, hated cell phones, hated email, hated iPhone. It's going to happen anyway. So either you decide to start getting educated or you decide to retire, which is fine. What do I think is going to happen? I think a lot of mundane actions are going to be AI'd out.

16:23So the person here who crushes cold emails is going to lose her or his advantage because I'm going to be able to type in, write me the best cold email to sell a house in Tampa, Florida, enter, and it's going to work. And then that means everyone can do it. Thus, it becomes commoditized. Somebody asked, is Instagram dead in the chat? No, Instagram's harder now because everybody makes Instagram. Nine years ago, 11 years ago, when I was yelling that everyone should do Instagram, it was easier because if you made one, a lot of people saw it because there was less content and a lot of attention. It's just supply and demand, just like housing and homes and apartments.

16:58So, you know, what I was - Are you still on threads? Are you threading every day? Yeah, I'm threading every day. You know why? Even though it's down 70 % from the height of the first week, 30 % for me is still a lot of eyeballs and there's higher consumption than there is on Twitter by percentage. The audience is smaller because it's kind of getting its legs underneath it. But that's, I am threading every day. I'm X-ing every day. And I'm doing everything every day because I believe that no different than bench ads and billboards and direct mail and being the head of the PTA and sponsoring the Little League baseball team, if I'm trying to sell homes, I'm selling on attention and reputation.

17:39And the one thing about social media is nobody can stop me and I don't have to pay. This is the thing that drives me crazy. If you want bench ads or bus stop ads or billboards or newspaper ads or direct mail, they charge you. This shit's fucking free. and everyone's like, oh, the algorithm fucked me. I'm like, it's fucking free, right? It's free. Yes. You bring up a good point. You do so many things, right? One of the big things we talk to our agents with is they're building their teams, right? We have agents that join Sirhan. They want to build their personal brands. They want to double their sales price, get to higher price points.

18:15They're using studios, ID Lab, all of our resources. It's all super cool. But then they have no time to breathe, right? They're operating every five minutes. they're all over the place how do you look at 2023 the rest of the 2020s in terms of building building operational teams figuring out systems and process because most sales people are here because they know how to sell they know how to show they know how to close they know how to negotiate if they don't we work on it but you run a lot of companies you do a lot of things you've got v friends you got family you're everywhere you're here right now does everyone just need to delegate Everyone's got to hire.

18:52You got to judge yourself less. When you're juggling 30 balls, if three break, you know, one, a father can judge themselves that, you know, like, hey, you have a friend and acquaintance in Ryan, but that's not more important than a child. And you decide to allocate 20 minutes to this at a time where you should probably be allocating it to that, right? To me, I'm not willing to judge myself and say that's a negative because that's not real life. Like, you don't, there's nothing, there's no such thing as perfect, right? And so what I think is super important is first and foremost for everyone who's operating, don't judge yourself when things go wrong.

19:30Literally right before, Ryan, the reason I was exactly on time and not one minute early to make sure you and your crew felt good was I had a text as I was setting up of a situation in my strategy department that's not going well. I'm aware that if I wasn't doing 7 ,000 things, that that one little thing, which is a big thing, could be going better because I'd be closer to it. But then I wouldn't be doing 7 ,000 things. So this is very simple. It starts actually in a weird place, which is the judgment on oneself. You have to fall in love with micro losing to macro win. Oh, I like that one. I'm going to note that.

20:04You can type that down right now? Yeah. I'm going to make that content. Sorry. This is how the magic gets made. It's how the brain works. You have to fall in love with micro losing to macro win. Okay. So to me, I'm micro losing all day. This fucked up. This sale was lost. We lost this client. Then once you get over that hump and realize as long as you go get 11 wins and seven losses, well, you've got plus four. The next thing is all about your people. Like you've got to think about loving them more than they, You work for them. You love them. Once they feel that, they'll over-deliver for you. And it's all about your direct reports.

20:50And then surrounding yourself with people that are good at the thing you don't like. So if you don't like operations and you're a salesman, you have to hire a number two that is obsessed with operations and doesn't like selling. Right? If you bring in someone who's operationally awesome and selling awesome, they're eventually not going to value you. But we all know this. one great thing about sales is whoever can make the money always has leverage. No matter what, no matter what everyone here sucks at, we can all sell. And that's a fucking son of a bitch, right? You know, that continued and we can then we've all learned how to get better at other shit.

21:28And so keep those things. How important do you value your sales skills as an entrepreneur? Number one, literally number two, kindness. I really, I know like this may seen fluff, but I really do think the reason I'm going to build a massive empire is because I just think I'm substantially nicer than most people that can build empires. Do you not think you've built a, you just said the reason you're going to, do you not think you've built a big empire? I know that I built a big thing, but I don't think people understand how big what I'm building is going to be. Does Gary Vee have insecurity? Of course, but not in business.

22:01It's been the only place that I've been secure in my whole life. I had way more insecurity, like asking a hot girl out in high school than I did about making a million dollars in high school. This has been my one safe place. I got bad grades. I lost in sports like everybody else. I had plenty of places that were telling me I wasn't good. The one place that has always told me I was good was selling lemonade, shoveling snow, selling baseball cards, building my dad's business, building my business. This has been my place. I genuinely believe in my heart. This is how delusionally, and you know what's funny?

22:36I'm saying it by trying to be self-deprecating. I'm actually going to be more transparent. I believe that I could build the largest real estate company in the world. That's how much confidence I have in my ability to go into any sector, even if it's not my sector. And because I've done it, I went into wine and built one of the largest wine companies in the world. I went into big boy, big girl advertising Madison Avenue from left fucking field and have built the largest independent company in the industry very quickly. I've made myself famous on - Against a lot of haters. Against a lot of people who were saying the way you were doing it, right?

23:13With your face out there is not the way to do it, but you still found success. And right, I'm going to really give you some roses why I said yes to this. I think you have a lot of similar elements, which is why what's happening is happening. And so anyway, I need to go to the little guy. I love you guys. I hope you enjoyed this. Thank you for being here, man. I hope we brought some value. Go enjoy your family. everybody else hang tight for two minutes. Oh, by the way, here's the right hook. But he was laughing. The reason I want everybody to sign up for WineText is two reasons. One, you should all be buying wine from my dad.

23:42It's literally 365 deals a year, one deal a day. It's like the old Groupon on text. It's the best, but there's a different reason. Text marketing done right could be the single biggest thing above even social media. So I think people should sign up for it. I know it doesn't work in every state, so I apologize, but you should look at it. A, you should always buy$50 wine for 20 bucks or$100 wine for 30 bucks, clients, events. We literally save money. But B, we literally look at 22 ,000 wines a year, right? To offer 365. But two, a month of you consuming the text should open up ideas why you should all do text marketing.

24:16I love it. Awesome. Thank you, man. Cheers.

24:28Oh