KGCI: Real Estate on Air - $0 - $16 Billion: Luxury Listing Mastery (with Aaron Kirman)

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

What is going on, everyone? Juan Carl's Barretchenet here, founder of Goldbar. And on today's luxury real estate podcast, we have the one and only Aaron Kerman. Aaron, what is going on? I am here at your event, which has been absolutely amazing. Thank you so much. You crushed it. But we're here in New York City.

We're both throwing on three hours of sleep. Yesterday it was just complete madness, 1,100 people, Times Square, Billboard, lights, everything. And, Aaron, you just crushed it on stage. Oh, I thought you crushed it. I was like so, I mean, to put on a production that you put on was amazing. The energy, the personality. the people, you should be so proud of yourself. Thank you.

So I really appreciate it. So let's just kind of kick off and give the listeners a little preview of what you did on stage. We started off with you talking about your $141 million sale or you completely like just changed the way that people market luxury real estate and just went out there and got clients. Go ahead and give everyone a little backward

in terms of how you got started and where you're at the moment. Yeah, so my history, you wanted to go back to that. Yeah, yeah. Perfect. So you know, I grew up. in a different world. I was not part of the wealthy, you know, world that we live in today. Mom was a schoolteacher, dad was a trucker, had dyslexia, had real difficulties,

reading, writing, couldn't talk. I couldn't say the letter R, actually. And I have two R's in my name, which was never fun in high school. Or in elementary school when I had to introduce myself. But, you know, we persevered and we fought. And there was always one thing I loved in my life, and that was real estate. From the day I was like a kid. I remember when I was 6, 7, 8, I used to ride my BMX bike to all these big houses, mansions, and if I thought that they were empty, I would hop the fence, and I would go in them. And I would just either pretend to know that I would want to sell them or I would live in them one day. And I think through manifestation, we landed here.

It all became a reality. And you got your license at 18, right? I got my license at 18. But I was working real estate before that, actually. Oh, really? Yeah. So I started at 16. as an intern.

And I, funny enough, I got fired for my first intern position in real estate. No kidding. They're probably regarding that decision now, right? The guy to the state is in real estate, you know, he's been real estate forever in a day. He always says he was, I was the biggest fire, worst case fire he's ever had. Worst mistake ever, yes. Worst mistake ever because he fired me for dropping mail or something and next thing, you know, I know a couple years later. We are where we are.

Look at that. And now, in regards to the beginning of your career, how did you get your start? Was it working rentals? Did you just take on anything you could? Like, how did that go? Yeah, I started like everyone else. I had to start at the bottom and work my way up. So I grew up in, you know, probably not the most expensive part of the world. And that's where I started selling. And we started selling $200,000 houses. And I remember my first listing. I had picked a mentor who, you know, specialized in that area. And he had given me the opportunity to partner with him on it. And it was amazing because I had for my first listing and I'll never forget I had to show it with my mom on a Saturday.

My mom was in the car and she goes, I had never seen you shine like when I saw you show that house for the first time. I love that. I love that. She was like you were such a natural. You knew all the answers, all the questions. And when you didn't, you just were really honest. It was like you found your calling. It was like I found my calling. Yeah. And, um, you know, those people bought a house. So I sold their house. They bought one. And I'll never forget at the same time I got my second listing and I had two houses on one page. And I had two houses on one page. And I I remember thinking, God, if I could only have four. And I was like, and my goal was just to have four houses on one page to advertise.

Because back then we did a lot of print advertising. And I was like, I'm going to get to four. And that was my goal. Yeah. And then when I got to four, I was like, it would be really wonderful to have two-paid spread with my name on it. Yeah, yeah. And have eights. And so my goal was never like, oh, I want to make this much money or I want to sell this.

I literally, it was very simple. I was like, I want eight houses on a page. It was growth. It was progress. That's it. I love that. And if you've, It was very simple. It was very simple.

But if you fast forward to today, now it's like a whole different thing. You're selling 30, 40, 50 million dollar mansions on the regular. What's that like in terms of like, where do you meet these people? How do you find the clientele that own these properties? Yeah. Well, I'm really, really, really grateful because they find me. 90% of the time I get calls from people that are selling the most expensive homes in the world. And that wasn't always the case.

Yeah. I had to grind like everybody else. But today, through marketing, advertising, infrastructure, hard work, and just doing the grind, I built a brand. And when you have a brand and when people know that you specialize in something, they call. I love that. And so if you look at the homes that are, and these are homes, are anywhere between $30 million, and they could go up to $200. Correct. I have the same competitors over and over and over again.

So is it a very small world once you get to the top? It's a very small world. And you know the same people, right? Yeah. In L.A., I probably have six competitors. Okay. In Miami, I know the same five people that specialize in that. Yeah.

In New York, there's probably even less. There's probably like four people that specialize in that. Correct. So in the entire, and in London, let's say there's two. So in the entire globe, let's call it the mega broker that's selling, you know, billions of dollars in property. There's 11. So let's talk this.

So we have 1% of the 1% of the 1% of the 1% are selling and making over, million dollars a year in gross commissions then we have those rare brokers that are crushing it doing one to five million and then ten million dollars plus GCI it's like a very how many people do you think is actually like worldwide doing 10 million plus yeah probably 10 crazy great and by the way even that yeah like if you look at those people we should those people should be making 20 yeah but with the way the world works commission issues yeah partnerships and everything else it's really half of what people should be making,

even then at the top of the top. Now what happens when you get to that point, is it a matter of you continue to refine your brand? Do you, how do you make yourself stand out when you're at the peak of the mountain? Yeah. I mean, I think if you look at anybody who's successful, successful people are always, I mean, I don't know about you.

For me, fear of loss is what always drives me. I'm like, God, I don't want to have a bad year. I don't want my numbers to sync. I don't want to lose to my, I'm very competitive in a good way. Like, I love competition. I think competition's the best thing out. Like, I love competing because it only makes you better. Correct.

And so I embrace it. I love it. I love watching what other people are doing. And I always try to rewrite the book. How can I do it bigger? How can I do it better? And how can I do it different? And I think part of the challenge of real estate agents is,

Hey, Goldbar Nation, real quick. If you're a real estate agent stuck, making between zero to $100,000 per year and want to go to more than half a million dollars a year in gross commissions, all while still actually. having a life. We'd love for you to check out our platform at goldbarcoaching.com where we're helping hundreds of agents do the same. If you're enjoying this podcast so far, please remember to leave us a review and share it with friends. That's all. Let's get back to

the podcast. Agents often just follow the path of what should be. This is what's taught, the postcards, the mailers, the door knocking. But really, we're at an industry that's the most creative industry in the world. And it's the height of entrepreneurship. Correct. And those that are successful are the ones that are always looking to expand, to grow, to do it different. And so if you look at those, and I'm just going to use the mega brokers as an example, they're always building a technology, launching a technology, launching a book, making something new, changing the way we do it. And that's how ultimate success happens. And I always say, you don't have to be at the top to do that. Yeah.

You could be at any stage of the game, and if you figure out how to rewrite, how to work something new, how to create, that's how magic happens. So the perfect word would be innovation. Innovation. I love it. And I always say, and this is like one of my favorite lines, if you're not growing, you're dying. And so for me, every year, I'm like, what is growth? And sometimes it doesn't mean you're doubling your numbers because some years it's impossible. Like we had a horrible as like industry, 2003.

And I think it's going, as years ago. Which for you, was it a record breaking year or? It wasn't a record breaking year, but I did 1.8 billion myself. So what is a record breaking year if that's like? The year before I hit 2 billion. Two billion dollars. Has that ever been done before? For me?

For as an individual like team or an agent? Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah. I mean, listen, you know, numbers start to become arbitrary too. Yeah. you never know how people are qualifying the numbers. So, you know, some teams are bigger than others. But point of the story is, you know, what I had to work on myself as a human is not to judge myself based on how much money I'm making or how much I'm selling every year.

Because sometimes the world works against you. And like in 2023, it wasn't the market to break. Correct. It was the market to sustain. And in a way, you could have actually have had. more impact in 2023, regardless of the volume and all of that stuff. So yeah, well, what we had to do was we had to rewrite how we work. So in 2022, the market was so easy.

Yeah. It was a flow. And we didn't really have to work as hard. In 2023, all of a sudden, sellers weren't unhappy, buyers were unhappy. Sellers couldn't afford to sell because interest rates were, you know, already too low. So they're not going to give up their low interest rates. Buyers, like, why am I going to jump in at seven and eight percent? Yeah.

They didn't want to buy. So I thought to myself, well, what am I? going to do because we can't do what we did in 2023. And I landed on, as weird as it sounds, the phone was magic. Like, I had to pick up that phone and I had to explain to sellers why maybe it could make sense. And to buyers, why maybe it could make sense. And it took a lot of education, but it worked. It worked. I love it. And now what would be your advice to someone who wants to break into luxury? Maybe they're in real estate already. Maybe they just got their license. But But they aspire to be on a level where they could sell $5, $10 million homes.

What would you sell them? Yeah. People don't like this answer. But I believe in it, and it's the truth. If you haven't, and I tell my agents this every day, if you haven't sold a $5 million house today, odds are you're not going to sell it tomorrow unless you have a portfolio. So how do you get a portfolio? There's only really one way.

Find a mentor. Find a partner. Find somebody who's in luxury. Work with them. Even if you have to intern for them for free for six months, get through the door of that person. Because that's how you're going to learn it, understand it, be part of it, live the world, talk to talk, and eventually you're going to walk the walk.

And once you get your first $5 million list, you'll get your second, you'll get your third, and you'll get 20 after that. I have agents that worked with me, and I'm so proud of them. They couldn't get a $2 million listing. They are now getting $35 to $40 million listings by themselves without me. And I see that they're in my first. brokerage. They're getting them non-stop. But I remember the days they didn't have two million and three million, so they had to take me. They took me on the three, they took me on the six, they took me on

the tent. So you're like the Mr. Miyagi of ultra-luxury real estate. I mean, I, you know, I would never call myself that. He was the genius. I'm just, I'm just a worker. But, but yeah, that's incredible. And you're taking these people, do they have any background? This is people that are just getting into this. And like, you're basically remolding their, their perspective and their education and your turn them into these 10, 20 million dollar producers? Well, it's like, it's really a win-win, right? Yeah. So what we do is we teach them how to lead gen.

Okay. But we know that they're not going to be able to seal the deal. Okay. Without having a brand and name because they have to grow it. Correct. So with the right lead gen, anybody could get to anybody today. Yeah. And then they bring me in.

So it becomes a closer. It becomes a win-win. They learn how to pick up the phone. Yeah. and get rejection and denied until, you know, for every 100 calls, you're going to maybe land on one to two. Yeah. So you really have to build that tough skin.

But eventually, if they machine it out. Correct. I don't believe that they'll close until they build a portfolio. But once they build a portfolio, they're going to close. Now they have their own credibility and now they go out and do it on their own. And so our goal, you know, I have two jobs, right? I sell real estate still because that's my passion and I love it. But I also own a brokerage.

And so we have to build that process. brokerage and you know we we do that two ways we we build top talent yeah and we acquire top talent you acquire but we when I opened you know I had a team and this goes back before the mega team existed that wasn't a thing I built it like yeah there was one other person that had a mega team at the time and I remember I I called all these people they're like why would I want to join you because they didn't get it there was no team at the time and so what we did was we built agents and we taught them how to do it and all of a sudden our team

was number one in the nation. Wow. Yeah. And that was because we helped people grow. I'm gonna go ahead and cut it off right there. That was, we're about to do a luxury workshop for the people here in New York City, but that was, you just gave the formula. It's as simple as find someone who is absolutely crushing it in what you want to do, whether

it's selling five, ten, or even thirty million dollar homes, go out there and lead generate to find them the actual business and then have them educate you, mentor you, and actually close the deal until the point where you actually build a deal until the point where you actually your own portfolio and then you have the confidence to do it on your own. Exactly. That's the blueprint. And I just want to say one thing. Yeah.

You launched me on, you know, the one, which was one of the most expensive houses. Yes. What people don't realize is I got hired and fired from that listing two times before it launched. No joke. There was a drama. There was a story behind it, right? That's for podcast number two. It does podcast.

But perseverance and just sticking with. it and knowing that you're going to land where you need to land as long as you work hard yeah is always the right approach amazing Aaron you've been absolutely incredible I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to just connect with you and share this moment with you how can people find you how can people reach out to you if they want to work with you what's the best way to get yeah I mean Instagram's great Aaron Kerman my name and beyond that email is always great Aaron at Aaroncom I'm super easy and we go from there awesome thank you so much Aaron great to have you