Founder's Story - How Ryan Serhant Used His Personal Brand to Sell Billions and How You Can Leverage AI To Do It To, A Founder's Story with Ryan Serhant | S2: E18

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

Ryan Serhant, a name that has become synonymous with innovation, ambition, and the transformation of the real estate industry. Join us as we explore his ascension from an entry-level real estate broker to the founder and CEO of SERHANT., a vertically integrated mega brokerage that redefines the boundaries between media, entertainment, education, and technology, achieving multi-billion dollar success along the way. Ryan Serhant isn’t just another success story in the bustling world of New York real estate; he’s a visionary who has revolutionized the traditional brokerage model.  Subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss out on exclusive interviews and special content: https://foundersstory.beehiiv.com/subscribe For more info on guests and future episodes visit pix11.com/impact and https://fox5sandiego.com/fox-5-partners/impactful/Our Sponsors:* Check out PrizePicks and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: www.prizepicks.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to Founders Story, the podcast where trailblazing entrepreneurs share their extraordinary journeys, uncover the passion, grit, and vision that drive the world of business. Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of Founders Story. Today, we have the king of sales, real estate, and personal branding, Ryan Serhant, who is the former star of Million Dollar Listing. He's a bestselling author, three times author now with branded like Serhant and one of the top real estate brokers on the planet. Ryan, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So what was it, the spark in life that made you say, I want to be an entrepreneur?

I couldn't get a regular job. A nine to five, well-paid with evenings and weekends, stress-free would have been great. Couldn't figure that one out you know I but I also think I was always one who just like I just didn't want to be told what to do the rest of my life you know it's it's nice to think that a regular job would have solved all my problems but I also I also I did have some regular jobs working in construction and doing manual labor and um and when you're a contractor's laborer and 90 degree heat 100 humidity every single hour reminds you to stay in school and go build a business so you never have to do this ever again um i think it's a mixture of of

of all of that i think i'm also a builder i think think that's what I, I like to do. I like to invent and create. And if I can make a living doing that, um, then that's, that's what I'll do. You know, we can all do it today, which is why, which is why it's so exciting. I mean, any, anybody now can wake up and say, I'm an entrepreneur. No one can tell you, no, you know, you, you can go on Tik TOKok and and make thousands of dollars a month now you know be interesting have a talent you can you can go right you know you can do anything you want and put it out there and it's not like it was 20 years ago so it's uh uh it's a it's a super opportune time to be alive i think as as entrepreneurs, we are the worst employees.

I love in your book. I don't want to work for me either. I'm working for me. I mean, it would just be, I see what it's like for the people who work for me. And they come in and they're happy. And by the time they leave, their hair is grayer than mine and they're young. Well, I used to have hair at one point, so could i could relate um i know you've you said foundation is the key to building your personal brand and what you're selling as well but how do you build that or what are you seeing i know in your book you you interview some incredible people and talk about from your personal perspective but how do people build that foundation so it all starts um with a big mistake that i made a long time ago where i thought brand was

nike you know was a logo was a color was was something that i had no control over, right? It's something big. It's Prada. You know, that's when I think brand, that's what I think. That's a brand. You know, I didn't even think people could have brands. I thought people could be famous. Like I know of that athlete or that actor, but is that a brand? And so I didn't do the math and I just sort of bypassed that step and went immediately started focusing on all the

tangibles, things I could create, right? Which were, were, were, you know, the, the, the logo and the color palette and the font type in my business card. It was, I spent a lot of time early on in my career, setting up office, um, and not doing the things I was supposed to do. And so I learned the hard way. So you don't have to. And that's what I put into branded like Sir Hand. Everything starts with core, core identity. You know, like you think about like your core stuff, like that's your core, it's your gut. Same thing for us as businesses. And so whether you want to build a personal brand, because the way you earn a living is through you as a person. Or you want to build a product brand.

You know, maybe you're really, really, you don't want anybody to know who you are. That's your thing. Okay, great. But you want to build your product brand. It all starts with that core identity, right? Which is the thing plus an and. So I am real estate and now media, right? We have a production company. We are the most followed real estate brokerage brand on planet earth. Like we do, we sell through video. We,

we do a lot. So I'm real estate and media and it can change. Some people are, you know, they sell wine on a bike in the weekends. Like they're, they're great cyclists. So they're, you know, they sell wine on a bike in the weekends. Like they're, they're great cyclists. So they're, they're, they're, you know, sommeliers and cycling, whatever it is, whatever it is, you're Andy, you lean into it and that's your core identity. And an exercise people can do is really asking someone else to, if you're trying to build your personal brand, let's say, can you describe me to me without using my name? How would you describe me to somebody else

without using my name? And it's a weird experience when you do this and you do it the right way because everyone always starts with the physical. Like you don't even think about it. You know, things that you see on your fate, you're like, you don't think about it, or maybe that you see on your fate your body like you don't you don't think about or maybe you do um uh and then they'll always call out things you don't pay attention to like i do i when i did this i didn't realize that i i look at the ground when i

walk i was like what are we talking about it's like yeah you're the guy that looks at the ground when he walks like i'm that's who i that's i'm i'm the guy that's who i am that's how you know me he's like yeah i mean you do you mean so i mean you do other stuff but like yeah everyone knows everyone talks about it like everybody who's everybody talks about it turns out and i had to do this internally as i was figuring out my core identity as part of my brand exercise that i i when i was younger and I had really bad acne, that really bad skin, when I would look at people, when I would make eye contact with strangers, their eyes would dark all over my face and it was embarrassing. And I never grew out of that. I grew up, my skin cleared

up, but that muscle memory of not being embarrassed never left. And so I grew up and I still walked on the ground. And I was like, Oh no, but I'm confident. Apparently I wasn't. And so you build that core identity and that's the foundation. That's, that's the, that's the, and I could go into this for hours and hours and hours, but that's, what's in the book is pages and pages and pages. Um, uh, but that's where most people make a big mistake, what they miss. So let's dive into the content to community to commerce, which I've heard you reference and ways that you're finding success in building community. So along this way from going on TV to media to all the other things that you've done publicly facing, how have you found

ways that you're seeing that are successful when it comes to building community. So this is another mistake that I made. I feel like all of my books are just full of my mistakes. You know, we've heard people say content to commerce for forever, right? I mean, you would see a movie in the 80s and it would have a Mercedes Benz in the car. That's content to commerce. That is people seeing the content of a Mercedes Benz with Michael J. Fox in it. So they go and buy one. Right. It's just it's it. That's how the process works.

Right. It's commercials. It's now influencers and branding. It's the Kardashians and makeup content to commerce. But the world's changed now. It's really especially post-COVID. No one cares anymore about what you create content about because everybody does it. So the content is now

the commodity. It used to be that the content, right? The content was gold because to make a movie, to make a video that people would see and to distribute that, like that, that was a talent, right? To have that distribution. Today, everyone's got it. Everyone's got the palm of your hand. So now it's just a commodity. It's like air, air right anyone can do it and so you can no longer just go from content to commerce you have to have that middle c which is community um and i learned this from an amazing woman actually who i profile in the book too who um uh has built a business kind of changing the narrative for women with periods, right? And creating period positivity. And she did it and built that brand and everything through her community

as they influenced the name, the coloring, the brand motifs, everything. And that community is your driver because that community is your customer. So who has great engagement, right? You can have 5,000 followers on Instagram, but if 4,000 of them watch every video you put out there, you are more powerful than someone with a million followers who has 10,000 people that watch everything. That person has no engagement,

and that's 990,000 people saying no to that video. Whereas the person with 10,000, it's getting a lot of people saying yes, right? Or 5,000. So that community part of the equation is really, really important. And I almost go backwards these days when I talk to people, build the community first. Then give them the content that the community is asking for. And then by giving and giving and giving and giving, you'll never even have to ask. They're going to come to you and say, well, where can I buy this? Where can I get this? You got to start developing this.

And let them be that megaphone audience for you. I can really appreciate that. This show was created because a community asked us to interview interesting people. So I can relate to that. And I think I've seen her content, the woman you're talking about. It's very fascinating. It's like you're better off being loved by some than known by many. So very fascinating. How do you think AI is changing all of this with content creation? You have, you know, Sora coming out from OpenAI, creating incredible videos. You have all these different apps, chat, GBT and stuff that you can create content in five seconds. How are you seeing

AI changing this whole content creation? So one of the great tech founders of our time is a guy named Peter Thiel. He was part of the PayPal mafia, you know, built PayPal with Elon Musk. He then went and started Founders Fund. He was the first check into Facebook, all that stuff. He wrote a book called Zero to One. And that book, and this is before the AI boom,

this is an older book now. He says the greatest businesses of the next generation are going to be those that use technology to empower people, not replace them. And I think you're seeing that time and time again now. And we've seen it over and over. How many tech companies, quote unquote, went public in 2020 and 2021 that are now worth nothing? Right. in 2020 and 2021 that are now worth nothing, right? How many companies now have.ai at the end of their website? Whereas two years ago, it was.io, right?

Everyone had a token. Everyone had a coin, okay? So people ride these trends. But I do think there was a pre and post-industrial revolution. There was a pre and post-in. There was a pre and post internet revolution in the mid 90s and the early 2000s. Right. There's a pre and post mobile revolution that took a static environment and allowed you to go with it. And I think there's a pre and post AI revolution. And I think it will cost some people jobs, but it will create a lot more.

I think what most people are getting wrong with AI and eventually AGI is it's not just a wrap. And it's not the be all end all. Like you don't invest in the stock market into refrigerant. You invest in Coca-Cola. You invest in companies that use refrigerant and refrigerators. You're not investing in a company called Internet. The people that were involved in the creation of the Internet have been well taken care of. You're investing in microsoft amazon all the companies have been built on top of that initial technology okay ai is going to be the same so what i get excited about now is what gets

created because of ai and what sits on top of that new foundational layer so you mentioned sora is it going to replace jobs? Is it going to shake up Hollywood? Absolutely. But does it mean we're going to get movies faster? Probably. Does it mean now that maybe we can create things that we've never been able to create before? Probably. That's insane. Um, does it mean now that, and the same thing that social did. For me, I'm a realtor in New York who's built an entire business through social media. And I am a realtor. Imagine how many amazing filmmakers there are around the world who don't have access to Hollywood. They don't have a studio.

They don't have actors and actresses, right? They don't, or they speak Hindi and they want to make an American movie in English. It's hard to do. Maybe that's not hard anymore. How many stories are about to get unlocked that have never been told before? How many people have changed your life through content just because of social that like you never you never had before you know and so i get super excited what we're doing on on our side um is we we've created a product that we've worked on for a while now called simple um uh and it's for sales people so i don don't want to bore you. I definitely have my lane. I stick in my salesperson lane.

We do sales education. We have real estate brokerage. So we do real estate sales and we do production for salespeople and for real estate here. And simple removes all work for salespeople. All work except what they are uniquely qualified to do, which is meet humans, talk to humans, negotiate with humans.

And so simple, I think, is going to revolutionize how people work. And if anything, it's going to make work a choice. And then that's crazy. What do you do if you don't have to do the work that you've done for 20 years, but you still get to do what you do best? What do you do with all that time? So I know that when you talk about your AI, I know you mentioned it's humans plus AI, and it's replicating the processes and procedures and everything that you've done so people can replicate that. And I love how you mentioned earlier around this is global. So do you see people all around the world being able to unlock the potentials and things that you've been able to do with real estate,

and now they can do it as well? Yeah, yeah, of course. I, in terms of content creation, creation in general, yes. I think we have to be careful of copycats and deep fakes and all that stuff. But it's going to happen anyway. So, you know, it's like what I say about the market to our salespeople all the time. The market should never dictate your outcome. It should only dictate your strategy. So what that basically means is it's up to you if you want to complain, but someone's going to win. Might as well be you. And you don't want to be the, the, you know, you don't want to be the blacksmith angry about shoes and cobblers, right? I thank God we don't have,

I mean, imagine what your life would be like if you didn't have sneakers because you had to go to the local cobbler. Like, I mean, that would suck. I don't know. Imagine what your life would be like if you still had to use VHS tapes. Like technology is always scary

until it's not, right? Until you understand that value proposition. Anytime there's new technology that's in it's, you know, that is, uh, uh, um, uh, injected into, um, uh, into our lives. It is always scary until it's not. Um, but I, I am excited to see what will come of this, who like what geniuses are out there that we don't know yet. Right. It's like that, that kind of famous saying of like the, you know, the cemetery is full of, of, of, of amazing musicians you never heard of because they just didn't get the opportunity. Amazing athletes you never heard of because they just didn't get the opportunity. And so what does

the world look like if more people are given opportunity? Amazing. Thank you, Ryan, for being here today. If they want to grab the book, they want to check out the new applications and everything you're doing with AI, how can they do so? Go to branditlikeserhant.com, get the book, go to Amazon, get it anywhere books are sold. You go to sirhant.com, our company website to see all our real estate, our properties, our agents, and learn more about Simple. Awesome. Thank you, Ryan.

So many things, so many incredible things. We're on the precipice of the most amazing change in our lives possibly. And glad that you are a part of it. And thank you for joining us today. Thank you, sir. Thank you for tuning in to Founders Story. Keep exploring, keep dreaming, and join us next time for more inspiring entrepreneurial journeys. Are you a professional pillow fighter or a nine to five low cost time travel agent, or maybe real estate sales on Mars is your profession. It doesn't matter.

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