How to Get People to Say Yes | Ryan Serhant

Ryan Serhant (0:00)

You've got to be okay with being embarrassed. You've got to be okay with people talking poorly about you. You have to be okay with bad comments. Those people make more money. If you're willing to embarrass yourself, you make more money every time.

Shane Parrish (0:18)

Okay, I wanted to start this in a way that you've never started a podcast before.

Ryan Serhant (0:22)

Oh God.

Shane Parrish (0:23)

I have a gift for you.

Ryan Serhant (0:25)

Oh, no one gets me gifts.

Shane Parrish (0:27)

Oh, I think you'll like this.

Ryan Serhant (0:29)

What is this? Bremont. Did you get me a watch?

Holy macaroni.

Crazy. Thank you very much. That's cool. Look at that. Note for anyone watching, if you ever invite me on your podcast going forward and you don't first give me an awesome gift, I'm going to walk out. It's like in sales. When I first got into sales, I wanted to do bigger ones. I want to do more expensive sales. That's what you want to do. You don't want to sell the same thing over and over. Even if you're great at it, you also get used to it. Burnout is doing the same thing over and over again and not seeing results. And the way to move up in price point is putting yourself in high price point situations.

And so I always tell people you have to level yourself up and then you have to say no to everything else. And it's really hard for people to do because you get used to paying your monthly bills with what I used to do. I know what I want to go do, but I don't know if I can get there. They don't take the bet on themselves and then they spend their entire life doing what they're comfortable doing because it's much easier to do that and complain than it is to actually take real risk. And so the same way it was like, right, I don't do rentals anymore. New York City is 70% rentals. I do sales, only sales, brutal, brutal couple of months. Same thing here. I no longer do podcasts that don't start with gifts. That's why I was talking that way.

Shane Parrish (1:52)

Amazing.

Well, let's talk about this a little bit. The transition between you doing rentals and you doing sales was fascinating for me because it was almost a fake it till you make it situation. There was a story about a Bravo crew that was like following you around. And at the time you were like, oh my God, I don't want them to see my life. So you did all the things.

Ryan Serhant (2:13)

Okay.

Shane Parrish (2:14)

Tell me this story.

Ryan Serhant (2:15)

First of all, first of all, it's not fake it till you make it.

When I hear people say fake it till you make it, they say that because it rhymes and it's easy to say, but it also implies lying, which I just think is the worst, especially for anyone who's an independent contractor or who's an entrepreneur or who's ever had to sell anything to anyone.

Everything sounds great until someone lies to your face. So I've always aligned myself with being future me. That's it. I'm not faking anything. I know, to my core, the person I'm going to show you right now is the person I'm going to become 12 to 24 months from now. I've written it down, I've written it out, and I will manifest it. When I do it that way, maybe I don't become the exact person I thought I was going to be, but I become some alternate reality version of that person. So in 2010, there was an open casting call for the New York version of a TV show called Million Dollar Listing and Bravo was going to start franchising it, and they wanted to do it in New York, and they were looking for the best, brightest, hungriest real estate agents under the age of 30 at that time. I had been in the business for 18 months. I got my license the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy because I needed to pay my rent, and I was acting in the city and I had no money, and I didn't want to move home, and so a friend said, get your real estate license, you're going to memorize information, you're going to play yes and improv games on the street with new clients every day. All you have to do is rent departments, you get a small percentage of your commission, and then you can pay your bills. I had to make $2,000 a month. That is the whole reason I got into real estate, was to make $2,000 a month. And I saw this casting call come through, and I'd always wanted to act.