Investing Billions - E81: Ryan Serhant: The #1 Sales Mistake You’re Making

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Ryan Serhant is the Founder & CEO at SERHANT., a star in the Netflix show “Owning Manhattan” and Bravo show “Million Dollar Listing New York”, and a 3x bestselling author. In this episode, Ryan and David Weisburd discuss SERHANT.’s meteoric rise as a top real estate brokerage in New York City, Ryan’s unique approach to sales, sales training, and branding, and what it’s like for a founder scaling a business in hyper-growth. The 10X Capital Podcast is part of the Turpentine podcast network. Learn more: turpentine.co -- X / Twitter: @RyanSerhant (Ryan Serhant) @Serhant_ (SERHANT.) @dweisburd (David Weisburd) -- LinkedIn: Ryan Serhant: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanserhant/ SERHANT.: https://www.linkedin.com/company/serhant/ David Weisburd: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dweisburd/  -- LINKS:  SERHANT.: https://serhant.com/ -- Questions or topics you want us to discuss on The 10X Capital Podcast? Email us at [e-mail] -- TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) Episode preview (1:50) The impact of new Netflix show “Owning Manhattan” on SERHANT.’s business (4:41) Sales-as-a-Service and sales training (7:44) Common sales mistakes (11:27) Why Ryan started SERHANT. (15:18) Reflecting on “Owning Manhattan” (19:34) Recognizing potential in people (21:54) Strategies for scaling in hyper-growth (26:45) Branding (33:12) The 1000-minute rule (34:52) Follow & subscribe to The 10X Capital Podcast (35:20) Handling setbacks and maintaining perspective (39:38) Business expansion, success, and finding balance (42:20) Closing remarks

I was a real estate agent for 12 years, right? I did a million dollar listing in New York, Bravo for 10 years and all the spinoffs. And I went to every other real estate brokerage under the sun and said, I have a team of 65. We do a billion a year. This is 2017. I think I should switch firms.

A lot of people ask me, how much of this show is real? Melissa McGrath, a newer agent, was in the office, now has her first $7.85 million listing, all thanks to a guy who finished the show, literally got into his Ferrari, drove to the office, now has her first $7.85 million listing, all thanks to a guy who finished the show, literally got into his Ferrari, drove to our office, and said, I want to list with Sirhan. Are you that? You come do it.

And then there you go. And we have that from Tampa all the way north. I got 1,440 minutes a day. 440 of those minutes, roughly, on average, I'm sleeping at the gym, whatever, hanging out with your spouse, kids. So I got 1, thousand minutes to be productive. How do I use those minutes as dollars?

So I wake up every day, I'm the CEO of my own bank of time. I got a thousand fresh dollars today, which helps me be really, really smart with my time. So I'm not wasting it. The mark of a level five leader is somebody that's able to eventually step out of the business and the culture is infused. What do you need to do in order to create that culture

that survives yourself? The reason we do so much training is like, if you can teach someone to fish, they'll fish with you for a life. If you just give them a fish, then they're going to say, okay, yeah, Ryan was good while he was giving me fish. As I've gotten to know you, you're a very deep and empathetic person. Is the paradox there that it's a necessary evil for you to go out and just brand the hell out of yourself.

Ryan, I've been really excited to sit down and chat ever since my beautiful fiance, Jessica Markowski, one of your cast members on your new hit show, Owning Manhattan, introduced us. Welcome to 10X Capital Podcast. Thanks for having me. I'm glad your fiance works with us so I could strong arm you into having a real estate broker on your podcast. So the show just came out a couple of weeks ago, but Sirhan just had a record month.

Can you talk a little bit about the metrics and what effect has the show already had on your business? Yeah, we're in growth mode. I think most companies are always in growth mode, but because we're still pretty young, we're just about four years old now, we're growing every single month and June leading up to the show. So the show came out on Netflix on June 28th. But I was curious to know, what were my entry metrics for the month leading into that type of launch, which means what's the business that we really put into contract, you know, kind of Q1, let's say, Q2, even a little bit of Q4 of 2023. And so our total volume in terms of all activity was like $1.1 billion for the month of June alone, which for a publicly traded real estate firm is tiny. For a four-year-old startup like we are, it's a lot. And it puts a lot of stress and pressure on systems and support, which we're working through.

But for the month, it was about $845 million, not including all active listings and everything. And what was exciting about it for us was because we only started really expanding into new marketplaces about a year ago, is that a lot of the volume is now spread out evenly. You know, it used to just be like 90% New York City, 9% South Florida, and then 1% everywhere else. But now it's kind of gone down to about 50% New York City. And then all of the other markets start to take a little bit of even share, which is great. Georgia had a great month. So it's fun. The Netflix effect since then, I think we've, our website traffic has increased by about 1900%. Follower count across social has grown by the hundreds of thousands. I don't know off the top of my head. I know me personally,

I went from 2 million to 2.2 million. And the engagement alone, the engagement metrics have all quadrupled. You can have great lead flow, but if the lead flow hits less than 2% of the time, that's not great lead flow. But if the lead flow starts hitting between 10% and 20% of the time, that's great. There are instances of every single market, both with your fiance, but also with other agents who are not featured on the show. I am flooded right now with a guy just finished the show, got in his car, drove to our office in the Hamptons, knocked on the door and said, I'd like to sell my house. I think it's about $8 million. Who can do it? Melissa McGrath, a newer agent, was in the office, now has her first $7.85 million listing, all thanks to a guy who finished the show, literally got into his Ferrari,

drove to our office, and said, you, I want to list with Sirhan. Are you that? You're that? You come do it. And then there you go, and we have that from Tampa all the way north. So you're a great first principles thinker. How would you define what business are you in? What is Sirhant really? And what is the competitive advantage for Serhant? If I look at the definition for our holding corp,

which is Serhant Technologies, we are in the sales as a service business. So the real estate brokerage is brokerage as a service. So we provide brokerage services to buyers, sellers, developers, vendors, and agents, right? We are the place they come to be able to provide their service to their customers. But our customer in brokerage is the agent at this point on a global scale. We then have Sellit. I didn't wear this on purpose, but we just have a lot of media today for Sellit.com, which is the education side of our business, where we provide sales training as a service on a kind of a monthly

subscription basis, on a one-to-one coaching basis, and on a B2B basis where we go in where we do the sales training for big companies like enterprise, SDR sales training. Any companies you could name? Yeah, we're working, I mean, IBM, JP Morgan, auto car dealerships in Florida. It's a big mix. Why are you so passionate about sales? Because if you're not selling anything,

then you could invent any product you want, but you could invent it for your mom. You know, like one of my biggest clients of all time is a big tech guy. And I remember asking him on his plane, like how cool it was that he had created that software. And he said, I'm not in software. I'm in software sales. I could have the greatest software of all time, but if no one buys it, then yes. Is it about the product? Absolutely. You create a great product, the sales will come.

But if you don't know how to then sell that product, then there's tons of products out there that are probably great that you and I will never use or know because they were poorly managed or poorly sold. And they have product intelligence at most major companies, right? You have huge sales forces. You have 100 people. You have 10,000 people. They have clear product intelligence on what they're selling, but they don't have clear revenue intelligence in as much as what those sales people are able to

produce, especially post-COVID. So when there used to be the sales floor of an enterprise sales team, you have your sales leader, your manager, you'd have the boards and everything. But now, like one of our major clients we're doing sales training for, their entire sales force, to save money, is now spread between Ireland and Alabama. The headquarters of this company is Dallas, Texas. And so it's all totally virtual

because you don't have to pay as much of a base. You're just paying more incentives. But their churn has gone from like 20% to like 55% because now a virtual sales rep, there's no culture. There's nothing keeping me working for you. So how do I reduce churn for sales teams, for enterprises, for CROs? And if I can reduce churn, then I can increase their overall kind of net effective impact that these salespeople have. You've worked with thousands of people going through your programs and you've worked with increase their overall kind of net effective impact that these salespeople have. You've worked with thousands of people going through your programs and you've worked with a lot of beginners.

What are the most common hangups that people have when they start to learn sales? Come on, how long is this podcast? I think, well, the first hangup that most people have is they don't like it. They think selling is gross. They don't like it. People, they feel like they're taking something from somebody. So the first thing that you do with someone who's brand new to sales, like brand new to real estate sales, let's say, is you first have to fix the mindset and fix the framework. Okay, so that's one. Once you do that and you understand that even the pharmacy is going

to sell you hydrocortisone cream for your itch, right? Versus just telling you just go home and figure it out. Then they don't understand process and that they don't understand how the process works forward to talk to somebody who's going to buy something, whether it's $5 or $500 million. They don't understand that process of working with a seller, right? What is the process of the sale? What's the structure of the sale? What are the words I should be using? What kind of questions do I ask? The third thing that most people have a hard time with is we all grow up playing or watching sports.

And so we think when there's two sides, there's a winner. And so everyone says, oh, I'm going into sales. I have to win. I make money when I win. But when you're in business sales, I'm going into sales. I have to win. I make money when I win. But when you're in business sales, I'm selling my fund. I'm selling my real estate. I'm selling my insurance.

You have to play for the other side to win. So we have something called CODO, C-O-D-O, which is close on day one. But something that we talk about that a lot is as you play for the other side to win, by default in business, then you win. If the other side wins, that means the deal got done, which means you win. And those are a couple of things. I mean, I could talk to you about sales trading forever. I think a lot of people say I could sell ice and Eskimo, but that's not really what great salespeople do. I think great salespeople inherently will not take on sales that they don't believe in.

That's something that I've seen. And the opposite is true as well. The people that have produced millions and tens of millions of dollars personally have a product that I think they really believe in. Even outside of the product, they really believe in their service. Listen, I sell a lot of real estate. And we have clients who buy real estate that sometimes I think they shouldn't buy. And we say that. And you're honest. And you're fully upfront. If they still want to move forward with it, what are you going to do? Park in front of your car so you can't go drive and buy that condo you really want? But I really believe in our service. As the technology we

all use becomes more ubiquitous, as AI now enters into all of our spaces, that one-to-one interaction between two human beings is just getting, I wouldn't say stronger, it's like it's just getting more important. Because you want to automate almost everything except the decision. And that's what key executives are paid to do, which is make key decisions. I think that's what great salespeople are being compensated to do. It's what is my decision matrix for a large financial decision? I need somebody, not something, to help me make that decision. And that's really what we do. And that's the service that we provide. And the best salespeople are then compensated for it, most times without a base salary, without any benefits. They just run butt naked through the world.

To an outsider, it would seem that real estate has a commoditization where the relationship is really central with the person, but people go from one brokerage to another. How have you institutionalized service into your offering across all your agents? That's a big question. I definitely start with culture first and foremost. People don't quit jobs, they quit managers. And we don't have a whole lot of managers here. Like you're in our podcast studio at our headquarters in Soho because I live here and I wanted one. But for the most part, our business is fully in the cloud. Our agents work from their cars, from their homes, all over the country, all over

the world at this point. So they can sell to anyone, anywhere, on any device at any time. But understanding that culture and having them say to themselves, yeah, but working at Serhant is fun. Yes, but working at Serhant is good for my career. I've doubled my sales flow. I've increased my client base. Sure, this place could pay me more. Sure, that place might have more X, Y, or Z, but my life is better at Serhant. It's been a big part of our vision at the beginning.

And we do that by also not just doing things like creating single sign-on, but building, right? Building things and helping agents make their lives easier. One of the whole reasons I started this company was because I was a real estate agent for 12 years, right? I did Million Dollar Listing New York on Bravo for 10 years and all the spinoffs. And I went to every other real estate brokerage under the sun and said, I have a team of 65. We do a billion a year. This is 2017. I think I should switch firms. I don't know why. It's that time. What are you going to do for me? And how do you see your support in 2030? No one knew how to answer either of those questions. And so I really blame every other real estate brokerage for making me do this because I just was forced to go and start this company and build things like Simple, you know, and

enable agents to buy all their time back and redefine the way that they work. And I think that also creates stickiness and helps us provide the product of helping people buy and sell homes at kind of mass scale in a way that other firms aren't able to. I've seen you on a million dollar listing. buy and sell homes at kind of mass scale in a way that other firms aren't able to. I've seen you on a million dollar listing. You really seem to love the craft of selling and closing. Do you miss that? Do you miss kind of being on the ground and getting deals done and taking on more of a managerial and a CEO role? Yep. A hundred percent. And how do you balance that? And how do you make sure that you still have that in your life? I do a pretty bad job at it.

It's one of my goals now, now that I turned 40 last week, to focus a bit more on the things that I'm really good at. It's hard when you're starting a company. You have to wear all the hats. I was the top selling broker, plus the CEO, plus the president, plus the COO, plus running finance, plus being the direct report for everybody. Like, you know, that's the job I signed up for. And then I just complain about it all day long, you know, and lose sleep and stress out and work seven days a week.

So we're at the point now where I'm able to say, OK, I am the best at sales. I think that's really important for brand, for culture, for revenue. I'm the best at leading. So I'll continue to do that as CEO. And then I brand and expand all day long. Everything else, I would probably say I'm not the absolute best at, and I don't have that domain expertise. So let's go find the right people, put them in the right seats to get us the right results. And I don't want to go out there and pretend to be somebody I'm not, right? And so that's been a big effort as to what we've been doing.

So that way I can also buy my time back. So I can sell more. So I can be in more pitches. So I can do what I do best, which is why you do see me selling on Owning Manhattan on Netflix. Like there are, it's not a lot, but there are a handful of scenes that like were very nostalgic for me to watch because it felt like old school million dollar listing new york days like doing a deal on the back of a car sitting there in pressure you know putting the phone on mute and saying god we gotta put this together like those are you know

i'm passionate about that and i can do it well and so i want to do more of it a lot of people ask me how much of the show is real way too much well i I wish we had scripted that out. I mean, you can ask your fiance. Dude, they did that podcast here in real time. And it blew up in everyone's face in real time. What I thought Owning Manhattan was going to become was not what it ended up becoming. Because Netflix was really, really, they were intense with us. And they said, this isn't going to be a year-long shoot where you have story meetings and we go, you know, because we're not shooting an episodic.

We're going to make an eight-part occupational docu-series. And the people who want to see the real estate space, they are going to binge it. And that's what you need to go create. So you think about the production of television then in a different way where you're not thinking about commercial breaks. You're thinking about hooks and cliffhangers. And you're thinking about a through line of a storyline instead of this episode we're solving this case and this episode we're solving this case. There's only so much of that you can watch. And so it all happened in real time.

If it were up to me, everything would have sold. But it didn't. If it were up to me, you know, Jessica would not have been in this room with Jonathan while he was bad-mouthing the entire company publicly and then putting it out on the internet for everyone to hear. I don't think I would have scripted it that way, right?

It would have protected her more. Just to play devil's advocate on that, do you think Jonathan has really contributed to the show and to the success of the show? Yep. 100%. Yeah. I think, you know, and I think people see that too, you know, for as many people probably gave me, and I think I even said this to him when I was letting him go.

Like, I had a lot of strife in the hire of bringing him on. Because I get a lot of pushback when we bring on newer agents, we bring on disruptive agents or people that maybe don't fit the culture necessarily. But I also see a little bit of myself in everyone, you know, a little bit of an outsider, someone who thinks differently. He's up at 4 a.m. in the gym like I am every day,

like he's trying to get things done. And I really like that. And my vision for him was really to go from bad to good. You know, kind of the opposite of breaking bad. Yeah. I was like, you have probably 30 seconds to change someone's mind about you when you meet them. That's kind of awesome. Most people show up and they say, okay, that's a guy.

That's a girl. I've made no, they've made no impression on me. So now I've got to go create one. You make an immediate impression. It's a niche. Yeah, which is great. I think that's a superpower. I just wish she had gone in the opposite way.

It's good TV, right? Chloe, good TV. Your wife, good TV. Jade, good TV. I mean, the whole cast, I think the reason the show has performed so well is not just because of the real estate. And it's not just because of me. And it's not because it's New York. From all the feedback we're getting, both from Netflix and all the reviews and all the social and all that stuff, is it's really like people have picked their love it or hate it cast members.

And they're really drawn into those specific stories. And the cast is so unique and so diverse and so different that everybody can watch it because you're not just getting, oh, that's the show with X. And that only works for people that like X. It's like, oh, that's the show with the alphabet. And so, okay, I'm gonna go watch that because I really wanna follow her journey or his journey.

And I think that's why it's been so globally well-received. Yeah, and incredible production as well. It's like I'm watching a movie. Yeah, thanks, Sirhan Studios. Hats off to the crew filming this right now. They were thanked at the end of those episodes, which was wild even for us. Like Netflix came to us as they were filming and doing stuff. Instead of us trying to figure out how to shoot Manhattan and shoot real estate and drone through the canyons of New York City,

can we just bring on Serhant Studios to do a lot of that? Yes, sure, which I think was really, really cool for our team, which is mostly young on the content side. Mostly young, and they move really, really quickly. Yeah, it was fun. I think the city as a character, even this building as a character on the show, came across really, really, really beautifully. And it's a TV show. It's got to be visually appealing.

So going back to you have this superpower of being able to see potential in people. You see it all over the show. And you're oftentimes disappointed. Tell me about that. And does that hurt over the many years of constantly going through the cycle and, you know, people not appreciating your faith in them? Have gratitude, God damn it. I don't know what it is.

Like, I, it's kind of what I said. Like, I know what I'm good at and I know what I'm not good at. I'm a much better leader than I am a manager. I'm actually a pretty terrible manager. I was a few minutes late to this because I had to do my 90-day review for somebody upstairs. And I'm like, I don't know, just do your damn job. And I will empower you and I will lead you to do it really, really well. But I don't want to be, I'm not like, I'm not the guy to sit here and talk to you about, you know, how we can improve your KPIs.

Like, that's just, that's not me. But I do like finding good talent, kind of like a head coach or a general manager of a NFL team. You know, it's something I don't want to anger anybody, but I grew up outside Boston and I grew up watching the Patriots go from Drew Bledsoe in that game against the Jets through the Patriots era and watch them win all those championships with different players for the most part every single time. Like in one of them, you have Chris Hogan, who was a national lacrosse player, who they found, brought him in, made him a wide receiver, and then they're good.

Okay, they win. And so I think it's about figuring out, okay, we're all here to win. What's the game we're looking to win? And then I need the right players. And I've got to make sure that we've got redundancy, coverage, and we're taking care of our people as we go and training them. You know, I think training and the reason we do so much training is like, if you can teach someone to fish, they'll fish with you for a life, right? If you just give them a fish, then they're going to say, okay, yeah, Ryan was good while he was giving me fish. And then he got busy and stopped giving

me fish, but this company is going to give me fish. And then you kind of set up this instance of, oh, when there's deal flow, I'll stay at that company. But when there's not, and we really, really harp on, you're going to come here to build deal flow. And then it's going to be hard to, like, why would you go anywhere else? This is where the deal flow is. Speaking of development, I look at Serhant as, in many ways, a tech company. And I see you as a tech CEO in hyper growth. And one thing that's difficult

is scaling your team. You've got some incredible people like CTO Coin, Josh, your president. How do you even know who to hire to get to the next level? Talk to me about scaling and hyper growth. I can hire people to do everything but hire people. And it's become something I've had to really really learn how to do I am a big believer in homework right like you've got to show me that you can do the job and not just tell me and not just have other people tell me you can do the job we use personality tests pretty heavily we use that we use winbush we've just always had really really good success with them and. And so that also tests for memory too. We test for memory.

We test for personality. And that also helps me understand where they're going to fit within culture. And you can know what type of person I am. And you've got to do it for yourself too. So you take a Wimbush test. I have a user manual on myself that the company created. Yeah. It's the key to interacting with me.

Exactly. Pretty wild. I have the same thing so that people can understand, ah, this is – so when I do what Ryan tells me to do, he's still going to get irritated? Kind of, but here's why. And you've got to understand that based on everybody else. And then we use different types of, you know, systems to help us hire the right people to fit the team. Like, it is a sports team. And you have the owner, head coach, the general manager.

You have all the other assistant coaches down to all the players. You need all of them to win the games, but they're all hyper-specific in what they do. And so our CTO I also have known for a long time, and there's a loyalty and there's a trust there, right? Josh, our president, we went out and searched for. And he was somebody I never thought we could ever get. How many people did you talk to before you hired Josh? Like, how big was this process? 90. It was terrible. And you talked to all 90s or your kind of homework, everything. It was hard to find somebody that could really understand what we do, understand the growth, and also come from a very senior level of, you know, he was president of all Keller Williams. I mean, that's 180,000 agents based in Texas.

We were here in New York when I first started talking to him. We were 300 people. Why would you want to do that unless you think there's a multibillion-dollar idea, right? Unless you say that, okay, this is the next thing on my list. I went from here to here to here. No one wants to make a lateral move, especially employees, because you don't want to explain it down the line. I think when you have the right culture and the right vision and then the right team, it's like Tom Brady going to Tampa Bay. Like, what? But clearly he saw something that said, that's the championship team. I'm going to add my ingredient into it and we're going to do it. He did it that year.

Fucking crazy. And so hiring people, right, especially on the technology side, I love a good outsource and I love variable costs, you know, especially with developers. Like I look at what some of our competitors have done and they bring so much on the books and they have incredible payroll because I feel like people think that quantity means something I think people ask you how big is your company have 300 employees they don't ask necessarily how much revenue do you have exactly I it's more of a personal question. I think because I'm a salesperson, I want to do a billion a year as a salesperson of one. All the salespeople that I have to have to be able to do all of those sales means less revenue.

And now I've got to manage all these people. I want to have the leanest, most efficient team I possibly can. If I can build a massive company with as few people as possible, which is why AI is so important for us and everything that we do here, it just increases the value of all the people who are here. And that allows you to scale your support by a salesperson. You clearly are a great leader, but the mark of a level five leader is somebody that's able to eventually step out of the business and the culture is infused. What do you need to do in order to create that culture that survives yourself? I read from Good to Great as well. And that level five leader.

It's an incredibly rare leader. Yes. I don't know if I'm a level five leader because that level five leader isn't doing press about themselves all day. That's, I think, literally the difference between level four and level five is level five is company first, man or woman second, personality second. And unfortunately, we are a brand and a business based on attention. Ten years ago, I think I made the realization that the product in sales used to be your skill set because that's how you get business. Because people would say, hey, David, who sold your place? He did a good job. Oh, I'm going to go hire them. That was it. Okay. Your product was your skill set. Today, your product is attention.

And if you can match attention with skill set, then you win and you actually beat the person with a better skill set. Which goes back to your engagement of your followers. It's not just you grew by 10%, but you grew by four times engagement. You're more center of mind. Yeah. So anyway, I'm trying to be a level five leader. Eventually we'll get us to a point where this Ryan of Sir Hand, which we're doing a little bit now, can step out and that the brand can stand on its own outside of the

guy. So when we first met six months ago, I went to your office and I saw like 50 pictures of you. I've never seen that in a business office. And I'm like, wow, this guy's really into himself. But as I've gotten to know you, you're a very deep and empathetic person. Is the paradox there that it's a necessary evil for you to go out and just brand the hell out of yourself? Dissect that contradiction in your personality.

Yeah. My personal brand and therefore our company brand is what drives revenue, right? It's what drives recruitment. You just embrace it essentially. Yeah. It's what drives revenue, right? It's what drives recruitment. You just embrace it, essentially. Yeah, it's what drives recruitment, retention, and revenue, right? The three R's. Like, if that's what's going to make it happen, and that's also what's going to inspire people. So the reason my photo is everywhere here is because the agents-

It's a great photo, by the way. The agents who join the company and come here to our headquarters almost kind of come into this space a little bit like a museum, right? Every moment is a place to take photos. It's a little bit of an homage to the last 15 years of my life, like be in the room where it happened. Here it is. And also here's some history.

Here's the reason why you're coming here because Ryan sold this or he did that. There's photos of other people too. If the personal brand is what drives the attention, which is the product, which brings in the business to allow you to retain so that you can get the revenue, then I have to own it. Like I would be an idiot. Did you ever for a second consider having a neutral name and not Sirhan? Yeah, I tried. I tried. I pushed for one. I agree with the decision that we ended up making, which was calling it Sirhan with a period. But I really tried to call the company

like sunflower.com. We had other names, man. Because I was like, what if something happens to me? What if I do something dumb? And then it does hold you to a higher accountability, your name on it. I've talked to people with their names. It's a different level of commitment. Yeah. Listen, you see it in the show. You see it in my conversations with a lot of the agents. Least a better decision-making on personnel.

Yeah. If I owned a company that had a different name other than myself, would I care as much? Yes, probably. But when they're running around saying, hey, I'm so-and-so with Serhant and not, hey, I'm so-and-so with gpsrealty.com, forever the reputation is set with that one sentence. And so I think we probably, from all of our competitors, have the highest reputational standards because it's always going

to be Sirhan hired or Sirhan fired, right? Not X and X with company where Ryan Sirhan is the CEO. It's just a much easier... There's no backing out of when your name's on the building. Yeah, no. You wear many hats and I consider you a branding genius. Tell me about what is a brand fundamentally and how should businesses, maybe LPs, venture capitalists think about building their brand? So a brand is reputation, right? If you think about the math, I mean, there's two types of brands. There's personal brands and there's product brands. You know, there's like Phil Knight and then there's Nike. So if we start with personal first, you've got core identity. So who am I? Most people don't know. Most people have no idea. Define yourself without using your name and try not to just talk

about your job. That's weird for people. Is that a principles thing or what is core identity? Honestly, it depends. I think the easiest way for us to think about it, especially when we're talking to salespeople, okay, is say, okay, you are what you do and who you are. So what is your and? You could have 100 ands or try to pick one. Try to pick two because there are riches and niches. Maybe your and is social media. Like my and for a long time has been media.

It's what we get hired for. It's why people come to this company. It's how we generate revenue. I mean, it's everything, right? People come to us and say, well, I could go everywhere else. But media sells. And if people aren't building media companies that I don't know what they're really building, and we are a media company that sells real estate. So that's my and. And people have to figure it out. Maybe your and is tattoos. Maybe your and is kids. Maybe your and is kayaking or cooking.

So really figure out what that core identity is. Figure out how to define yourself without using your name. Then you've got creating consistent awareness. So that's consistent content. That's doing a podcast and staying consistent at it. It's social. It's LinkedIn. It's blogging. It's personal emails. Maybe your thing is in-person events. You do a dinner once a month, but you're consistent. And then part three to that math is creating what I like to call like shouting it from the mountaintop. No one cares about your successes more than you do. So people have to know about them. Kind of going back to the original product, product being skillset. You got to let people know that you are skilled to match today's product, which is attention. So the skills set doesn't go away. It's transferred differently

to your audience. And if you know your audience and you know your target market and you know that community, then you can start to really, really commoditize it and build it. On a product, we try to always turn products into people. So, okay, 10X Capital, is it you or is it really like who is that target? Who's the person? 10X is Bob. Who's the core customer? It's Bob. It's Sally.

What does she look like? What's her social media account look like? What is her core identity? If she was creating content awareness, what would it be, right? And how would Sally be amplifying her message? And you've got to do that same math to then go out and build the reputation. That way you can control your brand because everybody has a brand, whether they like it or not. They're either just in control of it or they're not. You live by this thousand minute

rule. Tell me about that. And how has that evolved over time? The thousand minute rule. I get flack for this. I appreciate you bringing it up. As an entrepreneur, no one tells me what to do every day. I have clients who say, you got to be here by this time. But other than that, I wake up and have to make my own life happen. I was trying to figure out a way to manage my time. What do I do? And so I started with just kind of creating what I call finder, keeper, doer, which was helpful for me to say every day, I'm going to find business, keep business, do business.

I'm going to CEO, COO, CFO every day. I got to wear all three hats. So from eight to 10, I'm going to find business. From 10 to 12, I'm going to keep the business I have. And then from 12 to five, I'm going to go and do everything I got to do. And that kind of morphed into saying I got 1,440 minutes a day, 440 of those minutes roughly on average I'm sleeping at the gym, whatever, hanging out with your spouse, kids. So I got a thousand minutes to be productive. And how do I use those minutes as dollars? So I wake up every day. I'm the CEO of my own bank of time. I had a thousand fresh dollars today, which helps me be really, really smart with my time. So I'm not wasting it because being wasteful with your time

as I've met more and more successful people in my life is probably one of the clear things they think about and operate on. And then also helps me with like bad days or bad phone calls because it used to be, you know, someone would be mad for 10 minutes. I just ruined my day. That just ruined, you ruined my day. You ruined my week. Oh, that was, you And now I'm throwing out $990 because you took 10 of them. We'll get right back to the interview. Congratulations, 10X Capital podcast listeners.

We have officially cracked the top 10 rankings in the United States for investing. Please help this podcast continue climbing up in the rankings by clicking the follow button above. This helps our podcast rank higher, which brings more revenue to the show and helps us bring in the very highest quality guests and to produce the very highest quality content. Thank you for your support. We saw on the show, you lost a large listing. How do you recover from that very quickly? Like what's your best practice? Do you do yoga? Do you do meditation or do you think a guy with a thousand minute rule does yoga? Do you think I have time to do yoga? Do you do meditation? Do you think a guy with a thousand-minute rule does yoga? Do you think I have time to do yoga? No. I wish I did yoga.

I, very specifically, I started doing this a long time ago. It's like evolutionary. We are not built to remember pain. We're built to remember pleasure, right? That's why we have kids. And we've got to repopulate the earth as much as we can. So you don't remember pain. We're built to remember pleasure, right? That's why we have kids. And we got to repopulate the earth as much as we can. So you don't remember pain. Otherwise, you wouldn't get on that bike because you fell off that time and scraped your elbows. You would literally remember the pain you had on your elbows and not just remember that you fell and that there was

discomfort. You'd never get back on the bike. To over those times i wanted to figure out how do i create muscle memory for getting over tough times how can i be tougher than the tough times and i literally go into my calendar 30 days out like if this was a terrible meeting something i hate you just killed a deal for me i would go into my calendar 30 days from today at this exact same time and i just say open me and i would type about how much I hate you. Like how much this sucks and this deal and this and it just unload in that calendar invite and then what happens is 30 days goes on right and I wake up and I come to that day and I see that calendar invite I'm like oh damn it and I open it and I feel one of a couple things.

One, now I don't care anymore because it's been a month. Two, oh, I fixed it. Oh, that deal did go through, or I fixed that problem. Or three, oh, it's still a problem. I've got to take care of it, right? It's one of those three, but now I have new sights on it. And so now what happens is any time that thing happens, like if you watch the show, I think in the first episode, I feel like I'm about to do a $200-plus million deal, and the broker calls me and says, nope.

And for a split second, I literally turn to this wall in the Empire State Building and put my face on it and just hug the wall for a split second. And what I'm really doing in that moment is making a mental note, this bad thing just happened, which is telling my brain, you're going to get over it. Because one of the best pieces of advice I also got getting into sales, which is a roller coaster of a life, right? You're up and you're down, you're up and you're down, is this too shall pass. And bad days come and go. And so do good days. That great deal you did, it's only as good as far as the time you did it. And you're only as good as your last deal. You're only as good as your 1099 in this business. I think it also helps, personally, I found surrounding yourself with level-headed people.

I have Curtis here. You know, I go through these. He's super level-headed. He literally have Curtis here. You know, I go through these. He's super level-headed. He literally hasn't moved. Yeah. This whole time. These ups and downs. And then Curtis is like, well, we have 75 LPs.

We have this and this. And I'm like, yeah, that's right. Like nothing really changed from the last meeting. But having that is like a nice way to do it. It's anxiety, too. Not to cut you off, but like one of the exercises they teach you if you have panic attacks is first you have to sit, so you have to relax your diaphragm. And then you get a pen and paper, old-school style. And on the left side of the paper, you write down everything that's bad in your life.

What is the panic from? Just go through all of it. And then you do a big line, and on the right side of the paper, you write down everything that's good in your life and when you do it right 99.9 of the time the right side of the paper is much longer and you just have to be honest with yourself that way and by then you've caught your breath you've calmed down and you realize like what curtis does for you oh right things are great and my worst day is her greatest day of all time it It's like that meme where you see the guy in a car. He's like, I hate my car. And then the person next to him in a bike, he's like, I wish I had a car. And then the person waiting for the bus is like, I wish I had a bike. And

the person walking by is like, I wish I had money to afford a bus. Absolutely. And speaking of slowing down, you've built these like three businesses. How do you make the decision on whether to go wide and deep? And do you ever think, I need to take two steps back so I could go for that $10 billion, $1 billion development? How do you look at what challenges to take on and when to go forward, when to go back and plan? I mean, I made a decision a long time ago that sales, that's kind of why we started this conversation, but you know, sales as a service, sales is our oak tree. And we can go build a forest of those oak trees. I'm not, I'm probably not going to have this similar success rate if I go and try to make an apple orchard, you know,

or an orange tree farm. Like I have oak trees. Those oak trees can then have branches or I can have other oak trees. And so like along the lines of like the tech, right? So like building Simple, which is AI powered back office support for salespeople to buy all their time back. And I can empower humans. It's really what it does.

So I can take a human support person who with our competition can handle four to five salespeople a day and using Sirhan Simple, one human support person who, with our competition, can handle four to five salespeople a day. And using Serhant Simple, one human support person can handle between 100 and 120 salespeople a day. Because we've taken all of the tasks custom based on the individual salesperson, and we've automated them using recipes. That is right now a pretty big branch of our oak tree, but will soon become a separate oak tree in the same forest, right? Kind of underneath our hold co. But I wouldn't go out. Your core identity as a sales organization will never change.

Correct. And which also stops me from making decisions that'll be a distraction. It's like the Steve Jobs quote where he says, is this issue of focus? Like, I don't want to be distracted by trying to create a line of shoes just because I could. It's not what I do. I don't even have that many shoes. I think it becomes hard to focus if you don't have that core focus. If you don't have that core identity, you're always kind of like the dog chasing the next car. Yeah, you got to know what you want. Like, what do you want?

Can you define the difference in your own life between what makes you happy and what makes you joyful? Like, are you trying to be satisfied? Are you trying to be content? How do you define success? Like these are big questions that I think most people should try to answer because it'll help them with their own vision, you know, from myself to you to Curtis to Danny. What is that? And when you can answer those big questions, it just really, really helps that decision tree for everything else in your life. What restaurant to go to? This, this, this, you know? My mentor, Eric Anderson, taught me this concept of building your last business. What business do

you want to work in the next 30, 40 years? And then go about building that. And then that leads to kind of work-life balance and happiness in life. So on that note, I really appreciate you jumping on the podcast. Obviously, I binged. I woke up at 3 a.m. to watch the show with Jessica. I heard. And we binged through that. She 3am to watch the show with Jessica I heard and we binged through that she's great man she comes across so great on camera

I love that she has an arc as well you know kind of starts gets in the middle of it which is listen it's a reality TV show and then comes out strong

and I think the future the future is super bright and then you get people that root for you like you don't want to be one note yeah

yeah and she's really evolved and I really appreciate your, your faith in her as well. And thanks for jumping on the podcast. Thanks man. Thanks for listening to the audio version of this podcast. Come on over to 10X Capital Podcast on YouTube by typing in 10X Capital Podcast into youtube.com and clicking the subscribe button. On the YouTube version of this podcast, you could see the graphs, visuals, and key takeaways that accompany every episode.